Federale 1

Le championnat de France de première division fédérale, a.k.a. Fédérale 1, is a French rugby union club competition, the highest level of amateur rugby. The competition has been organised by the Fédération Française de Rugby since 2000, when it replaced the B2 Group. The championship is contested between 40 teams and named in honor of the famous former FC Lourdes and French International player, Jean Prat.

The format is long-winded and includes many steps. Before the 2015–16 season, the structure was even more complex.

Preliminary phase

A total of 10 teams compete on a double round-robin basis (18 games) in each of the 4 groups. At the end of this phase, the teams are divided as follows:

Second phase

Starting in 2017–18, only one team will be automatically promoted from Fédérale 1 to Pro D2, namely the league champion. This will presumably be accomplished by playing the promotion playoffs through a final. Through the 2019–20 season, two teams will continue to be promoted each season, but the second promotion place will go to a "wildcard" club selected by Ligue Nationale de Rugby, which operates the Top 14 and Pro D2. The "wildcard" club must be located north of a line running roughly from La Rochelle to Lyon, and show itself to be capable of transitioning to fully professional rugby.

For the 2016–17, there are 41 teams, divided into four pools.

Pool 1 is the promotion group and consists of eleven teams. The top team will automatically be promoted to the Pro D2 competition, while the four next-best placed teams taking part in promotion play-offs for a second promotion place.

Pools 2, 3 and 4 each consists of ten teams. The top five teams, plus the sixth-placed team with the best record, will take part in the play-offs for the Jean Prat Trophy. The bottom team in each group is relegated to Fédérale 2, while the second-bottom teams progress to relegation play-offs.

The first semi-final two-leg series of the Jean-Prat would see Périgueux face off against tournament favorites Colomiers. The first leg ended in a draw 12-12 with no tries scored and every point on the board put up by penalty kicks. In the second leg, Colomiers still couldn't manage to figure out Périgueux, but managed to eventually defeat them 9-6 to move on to the final.

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