Valence

Valence sits on the Rhône, and its handball club has spent most of its life a level or two below the game's showcase — VHB, as it is still known around the Palais des sports Pierre-Mendès-France, has never troubled the Coupe de France beyond a last-32 finish in 2001-02. The club, founded in 1988, built its way up through the lower divisions rather than arriving fully formed: a first national title came in Nationale 2 in 1997, and it took another fifteen years to clear Nationale 1, won in 2012, the result that sent the side up to the level it plays at now.

Romain Nebois wore the captain's armband there before moving to the bench as coach, the kind of switch that keeps a dressing room's memory intact even as the players around it turn over. The academy has kept producing rather than importing: Joshua Felletig came through the youth section into the pro squad, and Aboubakar Fofana, capped internationally by the United States, is the name the club points to when the conversation turns to what its academy can produce.

There is no single fixture the club is built around, but two recur: a regional derby against Grenoble's GSMH38 across the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, and a tighter, more local meeting with HBC Loriol inside the Drôme itself. In June 2025 the club changed its name to Valence Drôme Handball, though VHB has stuck as the everyday shorthand. It plays now in Proligue, the level below the elite, at the Palais des sports Pierre-Mendès-France, a ground that holds 2,000.