BELGIUM: RAA Louviéroise (1972-2009) / URS Centre (2007-2011) / Football Couillet La Louvière (2009-2011) / UR La Louvière Centre (2011-2020) / RAAL La Louvière (2017-) / La Louvière Centre (2020-)

Stade Communal du Tivoli, La Louvière (RAAL La Louvière & La Louvière Centre, formerly RAA Louviéroise / URS du Centre / Football Couillet La Louvière / UR La Louvière Centre)

Belgium, province: Hainaut = Henegouwen

29 III 2009 / RAA Louviéroise - KRC Gent-Zeehaven 2-0 / National League 3A (= BE level 3)

27 XII 2009 / URS Centre - FC Bleid 1-1 / National League 3B (= BE level 3)

28 VIII 2013 / UR La Louvière Centre - RUW Ciney 2-0 / National League 3B (= BE level 3)

Timeline

• 1912 / Foundation of Association Athlétique (AA) Louviéroise. The club plays its matches in the Stade Triffet, Rue du Hocquet.
• 1926 / Belgium's Football Association introduces the system of registration numbers, with AA Louviéroise receiving number 93.
• 1937 / At its 25th anniversary, the club obtains the royal epithte, thus becoming Royale Association Athlétique Louviéroise or RAAL. That same year, the club accedes to the national leagues for the first time, where it becomes a regular feature in the lower divisions.
• 1970 / RAA Louviéroise wins promotion to National Division 2 for the first time.
• 1972 / After sixty years, RAA Louviéroise moves away from the Stade Triffet to settle down in the newly built Stade Communal du Tivoli. The ground is inaugurated with a match against R Charleroi SC attended by a record crowd of 18,000. 
• 1975 / Winning the promotion play-offs, RAA Louviéroise accedes to National Division 1 for the first time. The spell lasts just one year, but the club manages two more seasons in the top flight later in the 1970s (1977-79).
• 1994 / After ten consecutive seasons in the third tier of Belgium's league system, the club wins the title in National Division 3A, winning promotion to Division 2.
• 2000 / Following an absence of 21 seasons, RAA Louviéroise manages a return in National Division 1 after winning the promotion play-offs.
• 2003 / In spite of a rather bland league season, in which relegation is narrowly escaped, the club wins the Belgian Cup by beating K Sint-Truidense VV 3-1 in the final in Brussels' Koning Boudewijnstadion / Stade Roi Baudouin. In the following season's UEFA Cup, SL Benfica proves too strong in the first round - although the Portuguese are held to a stalemate in Tivoli.
• 2006 / Relegation to the second level - but, as a result of incurred debts, the club is punished with an extra relegation, as a result suddenly finding itselves in Division 3.
• 2007 / URS du Centre (registration number 213) from nearby Haine-Saint-Pierre, playing in National Division 4, moves first team football from its own Stade Raymond Dienne to Tivoli. In its first year as groundsharer in La Louvière, the club wins the league title in D4, winning promotion to the third tier - and thus all of a sudden finding itself in the same division as RAA Louviéroise.
• 2009 / Having soldiered on for three more unsuccessful seasons, RAA Louviéroise finally succumbs to its grave financial difficulties. Bankruptcy follows in July 2009, with matricule 93 being erased from the official Belgian FA's lists. Following this, a group of RAAL supporters determined to keep their club alive in a new guise, buys the matricule of a small club from Charleroi playing at national league level in Division 4, RACS Couillet (matricule 94), moving it to Tivoli and renaming it Football Couillet (FC) La Louvière.
• 2011 / In an attempt to ingratiate itself with football supporters from La Louvière proper, URS Centre changes its name to Union Royale (UR) La Louvière Centre, which - not accidentally - coincides with the demise of the FC La Louvière project; registration number 94 is sold to a Charleroi businessman, Roberto Leone, who changes the name to FC Charleroi, moving the club to Stade de la Neuville in Montignies-sur-Sambre. 
• 2017 / In a nearly exact copy of events eight years previously, a group of supporters of the former RAA Louviéroise buys matricule 94 from the aforementioned Roberto Leone, whose FC Charleroi, through name changes and one merger, was now meanwhile called Racing Charleroi-Couillet-Fleurus, playing at Stade du Fiestaux. With Racing Charleroi-Couillet-Fleurus taking on the name RAAL La Louvière, the club's first team football moves to La Louvière. 
• 2018 / RAAL La Louvière wins the title in Amateur Division 3, the new fifth tier of Belgium's national league pyramid, in the first season of its existence.
• 2019 / With RAAL La Louvière having eaten away most of their fan following, UR La Louvière Centre leads a rather anonymous yet not that unsuccessful existence in ACFF's Amateur Division 2, winning the league title and gaining access to Amateur Division 1, the third tier of Belgian football. 
• 2020 / UR La Louvière Centre simplifies its name to become La Louvière Centre.
• 2022 / In a reversal of fortune, La Louvière Centre suffers relegation to Amateur Division 2, while RAAL La Louvière wins the title in D2, thus acceding to Amateur Division 1.
• 2023 / While RAAL La Louvière finishes in 4th place in Amateur Division 1, 4 points short of a new promotion, La Louvière Centre manages the same result one step down the ladder, thus qualifying for the promotion play-offs. The club actually wins those play-offs (defeating RFC Meux and RUS Binche successively), but no promotion results due to no licence for Division 1 having been obtained.
• 2024 / Champions in Amateur Division 1, 13 points ahead of runners-up KSC Lokeren-Temse, RAAL La Louvière accedes to National Division 1B, the second tier of the national football pyramid - heralding the return to professional league football in La Louvière after an absence of eighteen seasons.

Note: Below, a compilation of photos of three different match visits: pictures 1-8 & 10 = March 2009 / pictures 9 & 11 = December 2009 / pictures 12-27 = August 2013. 

All photos: (c) W.B. Tukker / www.extremefootballtourism.blogspot.com. Publication of any of these images only after permission of author