Stade Maurice Rigaud
Albi, Midi-Pyrénées, France
Stade Maurice Rigaud, Albi, France — opened 1921, 1 rugby league games hosted, home of Racing Club Albigeois XIII used this ground for a period before the club's rugby league activity shifted to the newer Stade Municipal d'Albi and, later, Stade Mazicou.
Sourcing caveat: A genuine, unresolved discrepancy exists between surlatouche.fr (which places the famous 1959 Kangaroos upset at this ground) and Rugby League Project (which places the same match at Stade Municipal d'Albi with a slightly different date and attendance). No tie-breaking source was found; this entry follows Rugby League Project's venue-specific record, under which Stade Maurice Rigaud hosted only the 1953 match.
Ground facts
| Opened | 1921 (Opened 2 October 1921, named after Albi-born former player and French Rugby Federation vice-president Maurice Rigaud. Still an active municipal sports facility today, primarily used by football club US Albi. A genuinely distinct, much smaller ground from the modern, much more heavily used Albi Stadium/Stade Municipal d'Albi (opened 1964) elsewhere in this directory.) |
| Home club | Racing Club Albigeois XIII used this ground for a period before the club's rugby league activity shifted to the newer Stade Municipal d'Albi and, later, Stade Mazicou |
| Games hosted (rugby league, on record) | 1 |
| Top recorded crowd | 5,800 |
| Years used | 1953 |
| Location | Albi, Midi-Pyrénées |
Name history
Rugby league history
Rugby League Project's own record credits this ground with just a single rugby league match: on 25 December 1953, Racing Club Albi beat a touring American All Stars side 11-5 in front of 5,800. A specialist French rugby league history site (surlatouche.fr) separately claims a famous 27 December 1959 upset win over the touring Australian Kangaroos (19-10, roughly 6,000) was also played here -- but Rugby League Project's own venue-specific records instead place that 1959 match at the newer Stade Municipal d'Albi (25 December, 5,845), and Wikipedia's account of the match is silent on which ground hosted it. This entry follows Rugby League Project's venue-specific data, which is corroborated by no contradicting primary source, rather than the specialist site's narrative claim.
Sources
Data last verified: 11 August 2026.
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