US Dax

Dax play in Pro D2, and getting there at all counted as a result: relegation to Nationale in 2018, brought on by financial trouble, had put the club outside the professional tiers before it worked its way back up to Pro D2 in 2023.

Rugby in Dax runs back through the Vélo Club Dacquois and Stade Dacquois before the two merged in 1904, and the town has kept faith with the game since — the ground carries the name of Maurice Boyau, a pre-war international who became a fighter pilot. A 2019 renovation left the Stade Maurice Boyau holding 7,262.

The club has never taken the French championship, for all that it reached five finals between 1956 and 1973, and that gap sits oddly against a run of five Challenge Yves du Manoir titles in 1957, 1959, 1969, 1971 and 1982, won across the same stretch that people in Dax still call the Golden Era. A brief return to Top 14 followed promotion in 2007, undone after a single season.

The fixture that matters most is close to home: Stade Montois, from the other end of the Landes, provide the opposition in the Derby Landais, a game the town treats as a rivalry that needs no dressing up.