Hapoel Afula

Football in Afula traces back to Russian Jewish settlers of the Hashomer Hatzair movement, who founded a club in Beit Jann, near Yavne'el, in 1924 before it moved to the city itself. That line did not survive the century intact: what plays today is generally dated to 1951, re-established after the Israeli Declaration of Independence, and it absorbed Hapoel Balfouria three years later. The club folded altogether in 1984 while stuck in Liga Bet, and stayed dormant for close to twenty years before a 2001 reformation sent it climbing back through the divisions almost from scratch — Liga Gimel in 2001–02, Liga Bet in 2003–04, then Liga Alef North in 2012–13, a run that put Hapoel Afula back in the second tier for the first time in 54 years.

In the Toto Cup Leumit, Hapoel Afula beat Hapoel Ramat Gan 3–0 to win the title in 2017–18. In the State Cup, the club has reached the quarter-finals three times since 2014–15, though that same season also brought a 0–7 semi-final defeat to Hapoel Be'er Sheva.

Home games are played in front of 3,000 at the Afula Illit Stadium, and the club still goes by the plain nickname Afula. Its colours sit oddly for a Hapoel side: navy at home, blue away, with red kept for the third kit rather than worn as the club's primary shirt, as red-wearing Hapoel teams elsewhere in Israel usually do.

Local rivalry once had a straightforward answer in Maccabi Afula, and matches between the two were known as the Afula Derby. Maccabi Afula dissolved in 2000, a year before Hapoel's own reformation, leaving that derby as history rather than a fixture still played out on the pitch.