It was on a beautiful evening of 16 May 2018 that Olivier de Biolley, Jean-Michel Verhulst and Eric Jacqmain met for the first time to set up the first regular tournament organised by the ROC. Driven by the same desire, and pooling their strengths (organisation and management for the first named, communication for the second and creativity and soft madness for the last), they launched into this rather crazy challenge.

After a long discussion and many ideas, some crazier than others, the Halloween Tournament was born. Why Halloween, you might ask? Simply because of a choice of calendar on the one hand, October being a period of the year « free » of big events, and on the other hand because we wanted to be different from the themes already existing in the other clubs. This is why pumpkins, trolls and knights, witches and magic potions, and other skeletons rub shoulders with budding rugby players, coaches, accompanying persons and parents during this tournament like no other…

The organisers have thus developed a tournament open to the U10 and U12 categories of the rugby schools of Belgian clubs, but also of neighbouring foreign clubs. This is how Hilversum, Luxembourg and Frankfurt joined us in this crazy adventure, the latter winning the general classification of the first two editions, and the unofficial prize of the public with a helicopter arrival of their president, under the amazed eyes of the public…

The experience and the feasibility of the thing convinced the trio to add the U8 category to this great mass of the Brabant oval ball…

But one does not welcome 16 clubs, that is to say more than 650 children on one day, without having the support of the club, through its members, but also of the sponsors and the many volunteers who made it possible to arrive at the result which we know today.

The congratulations received since the beginning of this challenge, both from the players and the coaches, motivate us to keep going forward and to extend the list of participants.

We look forward to seeing you at the next edition which will take place on 14 October 2023.