ClubPeter van Maanen was active as a physics teacher in 1971, and he often told his students about one of his biggest hobby; RUGBY. Becoming enthusiastic by the stories about this game, the students soon practiced it after school and this became a regular ritual on the Thursday afternoons. Mid-June 1971, an announcement to recruit new members was placed in the local newspaper "De Stem"; Etten-Leur got itself a Rugby-club, founded by Peter van Maanen. Shortly after this announcement, several very enthusiastic people enrolled themselves for membership. This resulted in the foundation of Rugby-club Etten-Leur (REL) at 14th of June 1971, in the Leurse café "Hof van Holland", during an official meeting with Peter van Maanen as first chairman.
The first achievement of the new club was to register for a tournament of AAC at 29th of August 1971. That day, the incomplete team of 7 players merged with the also incomplete team of Castricum. This combination, named "CASAREL" achieved a second place in the loss-round.
After REL joined the Dutch Rugby Association, the team also participated in the national league. REL started in the D-3 pool; a pool for older clubs with lower ranking teams and teams of new clubs. In this pool, the first real league game was played in The Hague. HRC 3 was the opponent. By lack of club shirts -these were still in order- each team member played with a different shirt. But nevertheless Mike Jones of REL opened the score with 0-4 after 20 minutes. Eventually the team lost with 77-4, but REL started its way through the native league.
REL played its home leagues at "Sportpark De Lage Banken" and training also took place there. During those days Mike Jones coached the team and bar "Poem-Poem" at Kerkwerve in Etten-Leur became the team's clubhouse. At the start of the season league 1976-1977, the club had its own sports ground and clubhouse, renovated by its own members. The home base of REL was at the Lange Brugstraat in Etten-Leur, the former Unitas ground.
After the years went by, the achievements improved and the club became really champion 7-a-side on 4th of May 1980. In the season of 1982-1983 REL became champion in the First Rank South and got selected for the Promotion league. That was also the season that REL causes a native, political controversy by playing a friendly game against FALSE BAY RFC from South Africa. Not everyone was happy with this game because of the boycott against that country. Two years later the first championship followed and the first team promoted to the highest ranking in the Dutch competition; the Royal league.
The first team managed to uphold for 4 seasons in which the team achieved remarkable results against so called stronger teams. The adventure lasted till the end of the season 1988-1989 and from that moment the club experienced less successful years. The results became disappointing and the membership declined. Only after the end of the nineties, things became better. By organizing friendship days, the junior division managed to draw a lot of new members and even the senior division recovered.
Recent years
In recent years, the first team has found its way up again. In the season 2004/2005, led by Frank Maas, they promoted to first division. The next year REL 1 became third and the following year they became champion. Achieving the championship of the first division resulted into promotion to the premier division. The first year in the premier division was difficult, although the first team managed to stay in.
In the following year players and coaches from other Dutch clubs, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Romania reinforced REL. This improved the rugby standards significantly. Some good results and successes were achieved and again the first team stayed in the premier division. In the season 2009/2010 foreign reinforcement arrived from Australia only. A coach and several players together with several new Dutch players joined REL. After a somewhat slow start, the team started to run well. REL 1 narrowly lost matches to some Dutch top clubs and even beat some others. Again REL 1 stayed in the premier division and a good, solid basis was founded for the next season.
Over the years, several REL players have been part of national youth selections, selections for the national team and the national sevens team. In addition, the well-known REL-player Rik Roovers has become a standard fixture within the Dutch Rugby Team. He was also chosen as the rugby player of the year both in the 2009-2010 season and in the 2010-2011 season.
In the season 2010-2011 was again the Australian Paul Davey trainer / coach of the flagship Rugbyclub Etten-Leur. Under his leadership REL finished in 8th place in the national competition.
REL 2 is currently playing in the fourth class east division is there in the 2010-2011 season at a respectable third place finishes. REL has also over the last years a stable youth teams with players in each age group. By orienting on focused activities, the numbers in the youth teams are increasing every year.
In June 2011, REL had celebrated their 40th anniversary and during the celebration it was also announced that Rugbyclub Etten-Leur will start the 2013-2014 season at a brand new location.
