Building a home.

No field of its own

The De Telegraaf report of April 1965 says it plainly: until that point AAC had no field and no clubhouse of its own. The rugby section was by then almost thirty-five years old.

In a club memoir Pieter Tolsma describes the 1950s around Sportpark Olympiaplein: training and playing without a clubhouse, with a poor changing barrack.

The first plan was Ookmeer

In October 1962 Het Parool reported that the Club of 100 had raised more than ƒ12,000 in nine months for a home then planned at Sportpark Ookmeer. Nico van Galen proposed the idea; Louis Höhle and Jan van Lunteren led the campaign.

Thirty players pledged ƒ3,000 at the first meeting. A Saturday construction shift earned ƒ500, other Dutch rugby clubs contributed more than ƒ1,400 and a contribution of ƒ200 came from England. AAC was temporarily playing in Diemen after staging many earlier home matches in the Gooi.

The permanent ground was ultimately built at De Eendracht rather than Ookmeer. The sources establish both plans at their own dates; they do not record when or why the municipality changed the site.

How the money was raised

On 16 April 1965 Jan van Lunteren drove the first clubhouse pile, beside the new field at Sportcomplex De Eendracht. The newspaper calls the fundraising body the Amsterdamse Rugby Sociëteit: thirty members each paid a one-off ƒ100.

Two contemporary figures are deliberately kept side by side: in April the clubhouse was estimated at about ƒ85,000; by December about ƒ80,000 had been raised. Members cancelled trips to England and Germany and donated the travel money, excavated the site and removed rust, painted and primed the steel. Architect Trapman designed the clubhouse.

The money came from four sources:

• A Club of 100
• Demonstrations
• Waste-paper collections
• Work the members did themselves on the building site

Playing before the opening

AAC was playing on the complex before it was formally commissioned: matches were played there by 1 November 1965. April, the autumn and December belong together as a sequence, not as a single move date.

The opening

Amsterdam alderman P. A. Koets opened the clubhouse on Saturday 11 December 1965. The field was formally commissioned on Sunday 12 December; HRC won the opening match 3–0.

The opening feature also preserves a historic architectural rendering of the clubhouse. It remains at the newspaper as a source image ↗ until its image rights are established.

Three leather balls

In the same club memoir, Pieter Tolsma recalls that AAC once owned only three leather rugby balls. Each week Henk Knoop unlaced them, pumped them by hand, tied and sewed them closed, and greased the leather.

Knoop became an international referee in 1965 and helped establish the Club of 100 that paid for the clubhouse. These details come from attributed club memory rather than a contemporary newspaper report.

1965, not 1997

De Eendracht became AAC’s home in 1965. The National Rugby Centre Amsterdam followed in 1997 on the same complex. These are two events, more than thirty years apart.

The sequence, in short

• 16 April 1965: the first clubhouse pile is driven
• 1 November 1965: AAC is already playing on the new complex
• 11–12 December 1965: clubhouse opened, field commissioned, HRC win 3–0
• 1997: the National Rugby Centre opens on the same complex

Sources. Het Parool, 24 October 1962, for the Ookmeer plan, organisers and early fundraising; De Telegraaf, 15 and 20 April 1965, for the pile-driving, total and later fundraising; De Telegraaf, 10 and 13 December 1965, for the clubhouse opening on 11 December and formal field commissioning on 12 December. All via Delpher. The balls and refereeing come from Pieter Tolsma’s attributed club memoir. The 1965 AAC–DSR-C photograph remains at its external source while its reuse rights are unresolved.