Staphorst

Sportpark Het Noorderslag stays busy in the Derde Divisie, where VV Staphorst has made itself comfortable among the amateur ranks of the fourth tier.

That run came in 2015–16, when the club won the KNVB Amateur Cup and earned a place in the KNVB Super Cup for amateurs against Excelsior Maassluis, a match it lost 1–0. It followed up by taking the KNVB District Cup (North) that year and again the season after, a modest but real high point for a side that has never gone near the Eredivisie or the main KNVB Beker. In that national cup, the best it has managed is reaching the first knockout rounds, in 2011–12 against Sparta Nijkerk and again a decade later against SV Urk.

None of that carries the weight locally of the fixture against SC Genemuiden. Games between the two are known as the "burenruzie" — the neighbour dispute — and have at times spilled into unrest among supporters, the kind of derby where the table goes out of the window and old scores matter more than league position.

The club has sent a handful of players onward and taken others back: Mark Veldmate and Roy Stroeve both arrived with experience from FC Emmen, while Erik Bakker had already played for PEC Zwolle and SC Cambuur before turning out in yellow and blue. The colours themselves have stayed fixed since the club's earliest years, worn at a ground with room for around 3,000, on Parallelweg on the edge of town.

It began, on 30 November 1959, as VV Staphorst — a name still distinguished locally from SV Staphorst, the separate club that houses the town's gymnastics and volleyball.