Atzgersdorf Women

Vienna's 23rd district, Atzgersdorf, is not where Austrian handball's finals were supposed to be decided. Then WAT Atzgersdorf's women's section, built up after a 1970 merger with Danubia under Ria Rychetzky, changed the arithmetic.

The club as a whole traces back to 1912, but the handball story that matters happened much later, in the 2018/19 season, when Atzgersdorf beat Hypo Niederösterreich in the final of the WHA Meisterliga and ended a run of championships that Hypo had held for 42 years. They have not managed to repeat it since — runners-up to the same opponent in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 — but the shape of the rivalry has stuck: Hypo remains the team Atzgersdorf meets when there is a trophy on the table, including two lost ÖHB Cup finals, 2021 and 2023, the first of them a 25-27 defeat.

Closer to home, the fixture that draws attention is the Wiener Derby against Fivers WAT Margareten, a city rivalry that runs independently of where the two clubs stand nationally in any given year.

Home matches are played in front of 520 seats at the Hans-Lackner-Halle, a small enough ground that a European Cup night, against sides like HC Karpati Uzhgorod or PAOK, felt like an occasion rather than routine. The club has generally built its squads by bringing in players with experience elsewhere — Johanna Reichert came through two seasons, 2019 to 2021, before leaving for Thüringer HC — rather than leaning on its own academy.

Red and white remain the colours, as they were before anyone in Atzgersdorf had reason to think a Vienna handball club could take a title away from Lower Austria.