page_title: Section Paloise
section_title: Beginnings and first title (1902 - 1939)
hierarchical_section_title: Section Paloise / History / Beginnings and first title (1902 - 1939)
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: La Section Paloise, championne de France de rugby 1927-1928.
context_page_description: Section Paloise Béarn Pyrénées, commonly referred to as Pau or Section, is a French rugby union club founded in 1902 based in Pau, capital of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques Département. The rugby club competes in Top 14, the highest level of the French league system and is a section of the multisport club Section Paloise.
  Section Paloise has been chaired by Bernard Pontneau since 2006. The first team is coached by Nicolas Godignon and Frédéric Manca. The professional structure, known as Section paloise rugby pro, was created in 1998 and is supported by the Association Section paloise rugby which gathers more than 450 members.
  Their home ground is the Stade du Hameau, after 80 years of playing at the Croix du Prince stadium. The club won the Bouclier de Brennus three times in 1928, 1946 and 1964 and the European Challenge in 2000.
  The club also won the Challenge Yves du Manoir in 1939, 1952 and 1997, as well as a French Pro D2 title in 2015.
  They most recently earned promotion by winning the championship of the second-level Rugby Pro D2 in 2015, nine years after having been relegated from the top flight.
context_section_description: Founded in April 1902, the Section paloise de ligue girondine is an all-round sports club in Pau. Since 1905, it is simply called Section paloise. At that time, rugby or "rugby football" was hugely popular. The club was first established as a Barette (sport) team, yet the club very quickly turned towards this new sport of rugby union. A rugby club had already been formed on November 12, 1899, since the Stade palois, had been founded in café on rue Bayard. The Stade Palois was thus integrated into Section to form the dominant club in bearnese rugby. In 1912, Section Paloise abandoned its blue and black jerseys, in order to definitively adopt green and white as its colours. The club was then led by Welshman Tom Potter, who took on the role of player-coach until the outbreak of the Great War. The club (all sports combined) paid a heavy price, with around forty deaths on the battlefields.
  During the 1927-1928 season, the first team won the title of Côte Basque champion for the second consecutive year. Subsequently, it finished first in its pool of 5 in the French championship. In the following groups of 4, it defeated Stade Français, USA Perpignan and Lyon OU as well as the defending champions Stade Toulousain in the semi-final by 3-0 after extra time (1 try at zero). 
  Section paloise won the final by beating Quillan 6-4 in Toulouse in May 1928. That day the local newspaper, Le Patriote, reported that the "berets" beat the "hats".
  Before the war, the Section paloise won the  Challenge Yves du Manoir in the 1938-1939 edition against RC Toulon by a score of 5-0 after extra time, courtesy of a try by Desperbasque and transformed by the full-back Courtade.
caption: Section Paloise, winners of the French rugby championship in 1927-1928
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