Lyon

The name on the badge came later than the club itself. What became LOU started in 1896 as the Racing Club de Lyon, born out of a merger between the Racing Club de Vaise and the Rugby Club de Lyon, and it took until 1910 for the Lyon Olympique Universitaire name to stick. The nickname arrived almost as an accident of pronunciation: LOU, said aloud, sounds close enough to "loup" — wolf — that the club adopted the animal outright, and it now sits on the crest in red and black.

Two Top 14 titles, won in successive seasons in 1932 and 1933, mark the club's peak in the era before professionalism, alongside the Challenge Yves du Manoir that same 1933 season. The modern era has been built on a different kind of graft: three Pro D2 titles across 2011, 2014 and 2016 took Lyon out of the second tier for good, and in 2022 the club won its first European silverware, the Challenge Cup. Sébastien Chabal, whose name is inseparable from French rugby of the 2000s, wore the red and black.

Derbies with ASM Clermont Auvergne and FC Grenoble carry the weight of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region behind them.