L'Envol Stadium

The ground sits in the Les Coquelicots district of Andrézieux-Bouthéon. ASF Andrézieux-Bouthéon played at the Stade Roger Baudras, a venue that remains in use today but no longer serves the main team. The move to L’Envol Stadium in May 2016 replaced the shared municipal facility with a new one. It has a natural grass pitch and two artificial auxiliary fields lit for evening training.

The capacity is modest, listed at 5,000. The real test of the stadium came early. In January 2019, the club faced Lyon Duchère in the Coupe de France. The match drew nearly 5,000 people, a figure that suggests the community had been waiting for an opportunity to see their team play on a bigger stage. The official record stands at 4,196, a number that tells you more about the crowd than the architecture. A potential clash with Olympique de Marseille was held elsewhere, a reminder that ambition sometimes outgrows the local infrastructure.

The stadium does not carry a history of renaming; it has been L’Envol Stadium since it opened. There is no separate website for the venue itself, just the club’s online presence. The rugby club still occupies the old ground, keeping the town’s sporting life divided between two sites. It is a functional space in a working-class town, designed to hold the local team and the fans who follow them. It does not compete with the big stadiums in Saint-Étienne; it simply exists to host the matches that matter to the people in this specific postcode. The natural grass surface is maintained with care, and the lights work when the weather turns dark. That is enough.