Luxemburg

Peter Barton is the captain of a side that has to travel to find a league worth playing in. Rugby Club Luxembourg fields no domestic top flight at home, so its players line up in the German Bundesliga instead, a situation the club has faced since British expatriates put it together in 1973. It grew into the largest and oldest rugby club in the country, and it serves as the feeder for the national team — most of the men who pull on a Luxembourg shirt learned the game at RCL first.

The club has never lifted the German top-tier title, but it has gone up to it three times, taking the 2. Rugby-Bundesliga West in 2014/15, 2015/16 and 2017/18, with Paul Remedi captaining the side through that first promotion. Closer to home, RCL treats the Luxembourg Cup as its own: the final against RC Walferdange has become the fixture people simply call the derby, and RCL has come out on top in the recent runs of it, including 2022, 2023 and 2024.

Older silverware sits further back, from spells playing across the border — an Alsace-Lorraine Cup in 1994 in the French system, a Belgian second-division final won in 1998. Stade Boy Konen in the Cessange district remains the regular ground, holding around 1,500, though the club shifts the bigger occasions to Stade Josy Barthel when it needs the extra capacity.

The current squad still carries a family thread through it: Eugene Mark Gillespie won his first national cap at 50, and in 2026 his son Eugene Louis did the same at the identical age. With Barton now captain, the immediate business stays the same as it has been for years — holding a place in German rugby and keeping the upper hand over Walferdange when the cup final comes round again.