Castres Olympique

Castres Olympique arrive in each Top 14 campaign as the club that can still trouble the division's wealthier sides on its day.

The team grew out of a group of former pupils at the town's municipal college, who began playing together in 1898; the rugby-only club that took the name Castres Olympique followed in 1906, wearing the blue, white and grey still in use today. For decades that heritage counted for little on the pitch. The club drifted through the 1960s and 70s before Pierre Fabre, the pharmaceutical entrepreneur, took it over in 1988 and rebuilt it into a regular contender. The ground, the Stade Pierre-Antoine, was renamed Stade Pierre-Fabre in 2017, four years after his death.

Five Top 14 titles sit on the club's record, in 1949, 1950, 1993, 2013 and 2018, along with a Coupe de France in 1948. The 1993 championship still carries an asterisk: the winning try, scored by Gary Whetton, was given after a Grenoble defender had grounded the ball first, an error the referee only admitted years afterwards.

Castres measures itself against Toulouse, the derby known locally as the Derby du Sud-Ouest or Derby d'Occitanie.