Month: June 2013

All about Harlequins FC

Harlequins FC is a professional Rugby Football Union club that currently plays in the Aviva Premiership, the top tier of domestic rugby in England.

The club plays its home matches at the fables Twickenham Stoop stadium in London, which is also the base of the England national rugby union team. When the game was still amateur, many players of the club used to work in the London financial districts and since then, the club has retained strong ties with the financial sector of the city.

The club was founded long back in 1866, when the Hampstead Football Club was formed, playing its first official match the following year. However, with a growing membership base that broke the barriers of the region, the need for the club to change its name was felt and was renamed to Harlequins FC. The club officials came up with the name with the help of a dictionary and used the term ‘harlequin’ because they wanted the club to retain the HFC monogram.

However, not all the members of the club took the name change too kindly and there was an exodus of members from the club who formed their own club after sometime, which is now known as the London Wasps and shares a fierce rivalry with the club. The club led a nomadic existence in its first forty years and during that time, played in as many as 15 venues before being invited to the Rugby Union and asked to play at Twickenham.

Since then, the club has retained its home base at the venue, going on to renovate it to give it its modern look. Although not the most successful club, Harlequins FC is without a doubt one of the most famous club in the English professional rugby scene with the club drawing its fans from all over the country.