SKA Khabarovsk

In the summer of 2017 Aleksandr Dovbnya stopped a penalty in the shoot-out against Orenburg, and a club walked into the Premier League for the first time. Aleksey Poddubsky was the coach who took them there. Sixth in the Soviet First League in 1980, fourth in the FNL in 2012/13, quarter-finals of the Russian Cup in 1963 and again in that same 2017 season.

The club grew out of the army — it was founded in 1946 as the football side of the officers' house in Khabarovsk, and the name changed almost as often as the division. DKA, ODO, DO, OSK, SKVO, then SKA from 1960, then SKA-Energiya, and since June 2016 SKA-Khabarovsk. Supporters and the press still call them the army men, and the badge drawn up in 2016 keeps the Red Star.

The V. I. Lenin Stadium has been rebuilt around the team more than once. It held 22,000 for the bandy world championship in 1979; plastic seats and undersoil heating arrived in 2003, and the 2017 promotion brought floodlights and a new pitch in a hurry. Capacity now sits at 15,200.

The fixture that fills it is the Far Eastern derby against Luch of Vladivostok, first played in 1958 and contested more than eighty times since.

Vladimir Krymsky is the man the ground knows best. He played 489 matches across two spells, from 1970 to 1985 and again in 1990 and 1991.