The Belgian constitutional landscape does not make our task easy when it comes to explaining how things work in our country.

First of all, we need to distinguish:

- Belgium Rugby: the national rugby union 

- Ligue Belge Francophone de Rugby (LBFR): the French speaking regional union

- Rugby Vlaanderen (RV):  the Dutch speaking regional union

When a player subscribes to a club, he/she subscribes to a regional union depending on where his/her club is located in Belgium. He/She accordingly pays a subscription fee through his/her club that goes to his/her regional union.

From there, he/she belongs to a club and gets a sport insurance cover through its regional union. The club will then have one or several teams involved either in men, women or youth domestic competitions.

If the competition has a national scope (i.e. in national divisions 1 to 3), the club will subscribe its team(s) to a championship managed by “Belgium Rugby”.

If the competition has a local scope, the club will subscribe its team(s) to a championship managed by one of the two regional unions.

You now understand the complexity of our rugby landscape: a player belongs to a club, that refers to a regional union and may subscribe some of its teams to a national union if at least one of its teams is competing at a national level in men, women or youth categories.