New European club competition set to launch next month

A new central European club competition designed to fill the gap between Rugby Europe’s Super Cup and the domestic leagues of the five countries involved will launch in Frankfurt next month.

Initially, Ascent Rugby will involve seven teams, two each from Germany (SC Frankfurt 1880 and Adler XV) and the Netherlands (The Dukes and RC Eemland), and one from Czechia (RC Tatra Smíchov), Poland (Pogo Siedlce) and Belgium (Boitsfort Rugby Club).

SC Frankfurt 1880, one of the oldest clubs in Europe, will host the first festival-style event, which will see six teams compete at one location on a single day (August 22), with the second taking place a week later at Den Bosch in the Netherlands, hosted by The Dukes.

Ascent Rugby is the brainchild of four Germans – Rugby Bundesliga boss Niko Colic, Henry Blunck and former German internationals Timo Vollenkemper and Felix Lammers.

Explaining the motivation behind the initiative, Blunck said: “SC Frankfurt were dominating rugby in Germany and they were desperately looking for new challenges, and after listening to them carefully and trying to understand their needs, we identified there were more clubs like them in neighbouring countries.

“What is being offered by Rugby Europe (the Super Cup) is too far away for them at the moment, so they needed something in between that and their domestic leagues, to enable players to play at a higher level.”

Ascent Rugby has a long-term vision to play more festivals and increase the number of participating clubs, as well as potentially expanding its borders, with organisers of another league said to be interested in potentially setting up a satellite series.

“We are not a competitor of the Rugby Europe Super Cup, and we are not exclusive so teams can still play in their domestic leagues, and they should do, so we are looking for gaps in the calendar. It is really a development project at the moment but the feedback we are getting is there is huge demand for this,” added Blunck.

“We dream in a lot of different directions.”