Extreme Football Tourism: BELGIUM: R Excelsior FC Lambermontois (1984-2008) / R Excelsior FC Lambermontois (B) (2008-2023) / R Entente Lambermont-Rechain (2023-)

Stade Léon Rodez, Lambermont (R Entente Lambermont-Rechain, formerly R Excelsior FC Lambermontois)

Belgium, province: Liège = Luik

28 I 2024 / R Entente Lambermont-Rechain - KFC Rocherath 1-1 / Liège, Provincial League 2C (= BE level 7)

Timeline

1906 / Foundation of a first football club in Lambermont, Union Lambermont, which probably never joined Belgium’s FA and must have folded after no more than one or two years of existence.
1907 / Foundation of a new football club in Lambermont, which takes on the name Racing Club (RC) Lambermont. The club’s first pitch is a pasture owned by a local farmer, Mr Lambert, situated at modern-day Avenue des Villas. The club joins Belgium’s Football Association that same year.
1914 / RC Lambermont has its finest hour, winning promotion to Regional Division 1.
1918 / Its activities having been severely curtailed due to the hardships of World War I and German occupation of Belgium, RC Lambermont concludes a merger with Skill from Verviers, forming Skill Racing Union (renamed SRU Verviers in 1932). All activities move to Verviers.
1919 / Refoundation of RC Lambermont as Excelsior Football Club Lambermont, undertaken by a group of disaffected Skill Racing Union members from Lambermont. Pierre Larose is the new club’s first chairman, with one of the other founding members being 18-year-old Léon Rodez. The club finds a home ground on a pasture which is rented from a local farmer, Mr Vandenbroucke, at Lieu-dit Bruyère du Fourneau. Due to most of the founding fathers having signed up for Skill Racing Union the previous year, the new club is refused membership of Belgium’s FA. Instead, Excelsior FC Lambermont joins a rivalling association, the Ligue Wallonne.
1921 / Not having taken part in the 1919-20 league championships of Ligue Wallonne, Excelsior FC Lambermont wins the title in its first season as a competing club in the most emphatic of fashions, winning all of its matches, managing a goal difference of +102 (105-3). Subsequently, the club also wins the provincial title by defeating Ans FC in a tie-break played in Stavelot (1-0). Thus qualifying for the nationwide finals of Ligue Wallonne, EFC Lambermont is eventually defeated by Crossing de Ganshoren from Brussels (the future Crossing de Molenbeek, 2-0). Also in 1921, the club wins the Coupe Wallonia, a local cup competition.
1922 / Excelsior FC Lambermont wins its second title in Ligue Wallonne in a row, while also winning another local cup competition, the so-called Coupe du Baron del Marmol by defeating Fearless de Pepinster in the final, albeit only after extra time (1-0). Following that season, strikingly, the club allows itself to be absorbed by top flight side CS Verviétois – with Verviétois promising to pay Lambermont’s outstanding debts to Skill Racing Union as well as allowing Lambermont to reform after one season, as long as the club’s pitch would be situated beyond the city borders of Verviers.
1923 / After one year under the aegis of CS Verviétois, Excelsior FC Lambermont is reformed, and – following the intervention of a lawyer, Maître Georges Hermès – accepted as members of the official Belgian Football Association. The club starts its life as an FA member in Liège’s Provincial League 3, recovering its old ground, Terrain Vandenbroucke.
1924 / In its first season in Provincial League 3, EFC Lambermont wins the title, 3 points ahead of Concordia Pepinster. In the ensuing promotion play-off against Prayon FC, P3 champions as well, the club manages to win, thus acceding to Provincial League 2 – the top division of Liège’s provincial league system at the time. Also in 1924, moving away from Terrain Vandenbroucke, Excelsior FC Lambermont settles at a new ground, referred to as Terrain Grands-Champs.
1926 / EFC Lambermont finishes runners-up in Provincial League 2B behind RSC Theux; in the ensuing play-off rounds, the club falls one point short of a historic promotion to Promotion, the newly created third level of the national league pyramid – with Spa FC walking away with the ticket instead. Moving away from Terrain Grand-Champs, Excelsior FC Lambermont settles at Terrain Wasay – in fact situated on nearly the exact location of Pitch 2 of modern-day Stade Léon Rodez. Upon Belgium’s FA introducing the matricule system, Excelsior FC Lambermont is assigned matricule 299.
1927 / After just one season at Terrain Wasay, Excelsior FC Lambermont moves to a newly laid-out pitch at Rue des Ormes.
1930 / Finishing with an equal number of points as UA Plombières, Excelsior FC Lambermont wins the title in Provincial League 2C, thus acceding to Liège’s newly created Provincial League 1.
1932 / Having spent 2 seasons in Provincial League 1, EFC Lambermont drops back into P2, never to manage a return to the top division of Liège’s provincial league pyramid. The club spends the remainder of the 1930s in Provincial League 2.
± 1933 / Moving away from their pitch at Rue des Ormes, EFC Lambermont settles at Terrain Zurstrassen, in fact opposite the pasture where the club spent the first 10 years of its existence.
1945 / Due to a relegation, probably in 1943, EFC Lambermont finds itself in Provincial League 3.
1946 / Moving away from Terrain Zurstrassen, Excelsior FC Lambermont settles at Terrain Sauvenier, situated at Rue d’Ensival.
1949 / Having missed out on the title on the last day of the season in an away game against direct rivals Blue Star Gemmenich, EFC Lambermont misses out on the opportunity to finds its way back to P3. The club stays put at that level for the following 23 seasons.
1957 / Inauguration of EFC Lambermont’s first-ever clubhouse at Terrain Sauvenier. Four years later, electricity is added as an extra luxury.
1969 / Having disposed of just one pitch in the first 55 years of its history, EFC Lambermont now acquire a plot of land from a local farmer, Mr Minguet, which remains in use as a training pitch for the next 15 years. Also in 1969, the club acquires the royal epithet, thus becoming Royal Excelsior Football Club (R Excelsior FC or REFC) Lambermont.
1972 / Moving away from Terrain Sauvenier, R Excelsior FC Lambermont settles at a new main pitch situated at Route de Wegnez – in fact a meadow which it rents from the same owner as its B pitch, Mr Minguet. In a reorganisation of Liège’s provincial divisions, a Provincial League 4 is added as the new bottom division; with REFC Lambermont finishing in the bottom half of P3 that season, the club drops into P4 straightaway. In the following decades, the club’s first team rarely manages results which catch the imagination.
1974 / R Excelsior FC Lambermont is expropriated of its main pitch, which is replaced by housing. The club is left with just its training pitch, which is temporarily used for matches as well. In the second half of the year, the club finds itself a new pasture on the other side of Route de Wegnez.
1975 / REFC Lambermont has to move its A pitch 6 metres due to the Route de Wegnez being widened. That same year, becoming a non-profit organisation, R Excelsior FC Lambermont undergoes an obligatory name change – though it is a merely cosmetic adaptation, as the club is henceforth officially known as Royal Excelsior Football Club Lambermontois.
1979 / With subsidies being granted by Verviers’ town council – the municipality of Lambermont having been absorbed by Verviers 2 years previously – and ADEPS, the administrative service of the Ministry of the French Community of Belgium charged with the promotion of sport and physical education, works are undertaken to build a new ground with two full-dimension pitches as well as a training pitch on a meadow previously owned by a local farmer, Mr Orban, at Beau Site. That same year, the fields are levelled, while building works on the clubhouse get underway in 1980 with a group of volunteers led by Raymond Hendrickx taking on the bulk of the work.
1984 / Inauguration of REFC Lambermontois’ new ground at Beau Site on September 22nd, 1984. In honour of founding member and long-time club president, the ground is given the name of Léon Rodez (1901-1996), who attends the inaugural ceremony.
1987 / Floodlights are put in place at Pitches 2 and 3 of the new ground.
2008 / A synthetic surface is installed on Pitch 2 of Stade Léon Rodez, the result being that first team football moves to this pitch (probably immediately) as well. The ground’s main pitch sees very little football in the following 15 years.
2009 / Finishing 15th in Liège’s Provincial League 3C, REFC Lambermontois drops back into P4 along with R Aywaille FC and bottom club RSC Tilffois.
2019 / Having finished runners-up in P4D in 2010 and 2018 (behind RFC Heusy-Rouheid and AC Soiron respectively), R Excelsior FC Lambermontois now clinches the title in P4F, 8 points ahead of closest followers R Entente Rechaintoise B, thus returning to P3 after 10 years.
2023 / In its last season as an independent club, REFC Lambermontois finishes in 14th place in Liège’s Provincial League 3D. The club concludes a merger with R Entente Rechaintoise, resulting in the foundation of R Entente Lambermont-Rechain, which retains Lambermont’s low matricule 299; Rechaintoise’s matricule 3905 is erased from the Belgian FA’s official lists. As Rechain’s Terrain Les Tourelles is abandoned, all activities move to Stade Léon Rodez in Lambermont. First team football is moved to the old grass pitch, which had seen very little activity since 2008, while all other teams play their football on the synthetic B pitch.

Note 1 – The main source for the information above is a booklet published on the occasion of the club’s 75th anniversary in 1994, “1919-1994 75ème anniversaire Royal Excelsior FC Lambermontois”; sadly, no name of an author of this precious publication is given.

Note 2 – Below, a compilation of photos of two different visits: pictures 1-6 & 21 = non-matchday visit, July 2023 / pictures 7-20 = match visit, January 2024.