Still in Boussu. We kind of spoiled the surprise in our previous post. You know everything about RFB as of 1988, now get ready for everything before that year... In Stade Saint-Charles.
We are in 1922 when Sporting Club de Boussu-Bois was created. The local youth got to know the joy of football during WWI when the British were active in that region. Afterwards there were a lot of friendly games without having an actually formalised team. In 1921 the first talks to create a team started. A year before the "team" already started using the grounds of the latter Stade Saint-Charles.
Four years later, playing in the regional leagues, they would receive the beautiful matricule number 167. But it would take a hell of a lot more time before SCBB first reached the national leagues. In 1946 this finally happened, when they joined third division. This was only for one year, but again a year later they returned and SCBB stayed. Even when a fourth division was created the team could stay in third division. Up until 1958 that is when they first relegated to fourth division.
For almost 40 years RSCBB would go up and down between fourth division and the top regional league. A rather steady existence if you ask us. But the team wanted more. They had tasted third division and they liked that taste. In 1982 then they decided to merge with the younger and neighbouring FC Elouges (founded in 1934 as FC Elougeois), changing their name into Royal Francs Borains Boussu-Elouges. FC Elouges was punished and set back to the second highest regional league after having attempted match fixing. Pretty soon talks about a merger started. Shortly after they returned in fourth division and in 1985 they finally made it back to third division. That's also the year when they dropped the "Boussu-Elouges" and became Royal Francs Borains.
All that time they were playing their home games in the Stade Saint-Charles, but the aspired ambitions during the 80s forced them to move into a bigger and brand new stadium. This finally happened in 1988 when they moved into the Stade Robert Urbain. Unlike many other teams the original stadium was kept in use and even to this day it's being used. Mainly for training purposes, but it's great to see this standing still although a lot of it has been demolished in the meantime.
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