VOC Amsterdam Women

The team itself dates only to 2006, when two Amsterdam clubs, De Volewijckers and OriënTo, merged to give the city a side strong enough to compete at the top of Dutch handball. Rolf Schulte took the new club to its first title under the merged name within two years, a fast return that set the tone for what followed.

Sponsorship has rewritten the name on the shirt repeatedly since then — T+A/VOC, Succes Schoonmaak/VOC, OTTO Work Force/VOC, now Ruitenheer/VOC — but the green and black, and the "de groen/zwarten" tag that goes with them, have stayed constant. Home games are played in front of no more than 750 people at Sportshal Elzenhagen in Amsterdam-Noord, a small enough gate that the club's real reach lies elsewhere: in Dutch handball, VOC Amsterdam is treated as the place national-team players come from. In Europe the club has never gone far — a Round of 16 finish in the Challenge Cup in its first continental campaign, 2007/08, remains its best-known result there — and its sharpest rivalry stays local, against SEW from Nibbixwoud in what is known as the North Holland derby.

Of the players who came through the club, Estavana Polman is the name most associated with it, part of the production line that has taken VOC talent onto Dutch World Championship, European Championship and Olympic squads.