Closing 2025/26, looking to next season
A season that took the women back to the Ereklasse final, lifted the 2nd XV up again, kept the 1st XV in the top flight and set up a coaching change for next year.
The 2025/26 season is done, and it asked a lot of every side at the club. There was a national final, a promotion, a hard year held firm in the top division, and the groundwork laid for the season to come. Here is how it looked across the teams.
A second straight national final
The women’s 1st XV produced another superb season, reaching the Dames Ereklasse final for the second year running. Eleven wins from seventeen, the best attacking record in the group, and a place in the national showpiece on 30 May — a year on from being crowned champions, they were right back among the country’s very best.
On the day, RC Waterland proved too strong, winning 39–12, and everyone at AAC congratulates them on a deserved title. To come home with silver — two national finals in two seasons — is something this group can be enormously proud of. They have firmly established AAC women as one of the leading sides in the Netherlands, and they will be back chasing the trophy again next year.
The 2nd XV go up again
The clearest success of the year belonged to the men’s 2nd XV. After finishing third in the autumn league phase, they topped the spring cup phase and earned a promotion play-off away to RFC Gouda on 17 May — and won it 20–17.
That sends AAC 2 into the Eersteklasse for 2026/27, and it is the side’s fourth promotion in four seasons. The same group that started the year under head coach Jim Crick and assistant Edward Good climbed another rung together. It is hard to keep a team moving up year after year, and they have now done it four times running.
The 1st XV hold their place
The men’s 1st XV had the hardest assignment: a full season in the Ereklasse, the Dutch top flight. They came through it, finishing tenth of twelve and clear of the relegation play-offs to keep their place for another year.
The record — five wins from twenty-two — tells you it was a tough campaign, and nobody at the club is pretending otherwise. It was a building year: a young, much-changed squad learning what the top division demands week to week. Staying up was the goal, and the side reached it.
A new chapter for next season
That sets up the change everyone now knows is coming. Daniel Geurs takes over as head coach of the men’s 1st XV for 2026/27. Sydney-born, with twelve seasons in Australia’s Shute Shield behind him, he arrives to build on this season’s foundation. Pre-season will be the first chance to see what the new project looks like on the pitch.
The season isn’t quite over
And before the summer properly begins, the club’s own tournament comes round again. The Amsterdam Sevens — which AAC has run since 1972 — returns to Sportpark De Eendracht on 6 and 7 June. Players, families and supporters are all welcome; it is the most relaxed, most international weekend of the year, and a fitting way to close the season together.
That, in the end, is the thread through all of it. The results went both ways this year, but the club that turned up for them — close to 500 members, players from fifteen-plus nationalities, teams from age six up — is the same one it has been since 1930. On to the next.
