SC Wiener Neustadt

In May 2008 a First League club called SC Schwanenstadt packed up and moved to Wiener Neustadt, taking a new name, FC Magna Wiener Neustadt, and a new president in the businessman Frank Stronach. The town already had a football club of its own, 1. Wiener Neustädter SC, playing out its life in the lower leagues since 1908. By the end of that year the two were told to become one. The merger took effect on 1 July 2009 as SC Magna Wiener Neustadt, and the old amateur club that had carried the town's name for a century was formally dissolved in April 2010. The new entity kept the town, kept the colours, kept the number 1908 for its centenary records, and dropped the rest of the name down to SC Wiener Neustadt. It took until November 2019 for the club to reverse course and call itself 1. Wiener Neustädter SC again. Blau-Weiß, blue and white, remained the constant through all of it. The football itself has leaned on borrowed talent rather than home-grown players: Guido Burgstaller and Stefan Maierhofer both wore the shirt at some point, signed in from other clubs rather than raised through a Wiener Neustadt academy, which the club has never really had. The single Bundesliga promotion, in the 2008–09 season under the Magna name, stands as the high point of the merged club's short competitive life. The original 1. Wiener Neustädter SC had its own moments long before that: an amateur state championship in 1936, and a run to the 1964–65 Austrian Cup final, lost to LASK. Since September 2019 the club has played at the Wiener Neustadt Arena, which replaced the old Magna Arena. Against SV Horn, the fixture is still called the Lower Austria Derby. What began in 1908 as a small-town club is, after the detour through Schwanenstadt and Magna, once again calling itself by that name.