About the Club

The Asheville Rugby Football Club was born from a simple desire: to keep playing the sport we love and to build a community around it.

In 1983, after returning home to Asheville, Eric Johnston saw a city with plenty of open fields but very few organized recreational outlets. Having played four years while in college, he knew Asheville was ready for something new. So he started putting up posters in gyms, bars, anywhere someone might recognize the word “rugby.” Interest was slow at first, but momentum soon followed.

In the spring of 1984, scrum-half Bobby Roland returned to Asheville from Appalachian State and reached out. Together, they began shaping what would become the city’s first rugby club. First players included Chuck MacDonald, Lee Harwell, Ian Mills, and Anthony Tirona, with players from Warren Wilson College and UNC Asheville soon following.

1984 presented Asheville RFC with its inaugural season. The club dove head-first into competition, facing established sides from Spartanburg and Greenville, Johnson City and Knoxville, the Triad, Charlotte, Raleigh, and Wilmington. Each match helped establish the club’s identity: tough, welcoming, ambitious, and built on camaraderie.

Tradition grew quickly. Asheville sent teams to the Wilmington Cape Fear Sevens every year and proudly hosted the Bele Chere Rugby Tournament during the years the festival ran. When that chapter closed, Beer City Sevens was born, to continue our legacy of community-focused rugby events in the mountains of North Carolina.

What started with a few posters and a handful of players has grown into a decades-strong rugby family. Today, Asheville RFC stands as a place for athletes of all backgrounds to compete, connect, learn and carry the spirit of rugby in the Western North Carolina region.