USA Perpignan

The Stade Aimé Giral holds just under 15,000, a bowl in Perpignan named for a player who scored the winning try in the 1914 championship final before dying in the First World War. That final belongs to one of the two clubs that merged in 1933 to form USA Perpignan, and the club has always counted it among its own, along with titles from 1921, 1925 and 1938 won before the current entity even existed.

The sky blue, scarlet and gold on the shirt come from the Catalan Senyera, and it is that flag, more than the club crest, that gives Perpignan its identity here — hence Les Sang et Or, the Blood and Gold. Matches against AS Béziers carry the weight of the Derby Catalan, a fixture where form and table both go out of the window.

Perpignan's championship record stretches back to 1914 and runs through to 2009, when Dan Carter spent a single season at the club and left with a title. Between those years and that one sits a long gap, and after 2009 the story turned harder: financial trouble dragged the club down to Pro D2 in 2015. Two promotions back up followed, in 2018 and 2021, won as second-division champions rather than as a side re-establishing itself at the top.

A European final still eludes them. They reached the Heineken Cup final in 2003 and lost to Stade Toulousain, and that remains the closest USA Perpignan has come to a continental trophy — the one line missing from a history otherwise built on domestic silverware.