Champions Cup · 2026-27
Stade Rochelais
Stade Rochelais in every competition →
Next match
No upcoming Champions Cup match listed yet.
Results
About Stade Rochelais
- Founded
- 1896
- Home town
- La Rochelle
- Ground
- Stade Marcel-Deflandre
- Colours
- Website
- staderochelais.com (opens in a new tab)
Honours
European Cup (Heineken / Champions Cup) · 2
2022, 2023
Notable players and coaches
- Laurent Bidart — The club's first France international, capped against Wales in 1953
- Arnaud Élissalde — Player-coach who from 1954 built the club's youth coaching; co-founded its 'Allez Stade' newspaper (1958)
- Uini Atonio — Prop capped by France; spent most of his career at La Rochelle
- Grégory Alldritt — Number 8; France international
- Will Skelton — Lock; Australia international
- Ronan O'Gara — Ireland fly-half great; coach of the 2022 and 2023 Champions Cup wins
History
Stade Rochelais was founded on 8 April 1896 as an athletics society (officially recognised in 1898); its rugby section played its first official match in December 1902. Mergers carried it through the lean 1930s and the war, and it became Stade Rochelais again in 1948. Its ground at Port-Neuf, opened in 1926, was renamed in 1947 after Marcel Deflandre, president from 1941, a Resistance member executed in 1944. With Vincent Merling as president from 1991, the club opened an academy (1996), reached the Top 14 by beating Lyon in the 2010 Pro D2 final and has stayed there since 2014. After losing the 2021 European and French finals to Toulouse, it beat Leinster in the Champions Cup finals of 2022, in Marseille, and 2023, in Dublin, after trailing 17–0.
Sources: staderochelais.com · staderochelais.com (2) · staderochelais.com (3) · staderochelais.com (4) · en.wikipedia.org (opens in a new tab)