Alpla HC Hard

Dominik Schmid has worn the captain's armband through most of the Red Devils' run at the top of Austrian handball, a constant while the club around him changed sponsors three times. The team itself split off from the multi-sport ATSV Hard in 1986, taking handball — a section inside that club since 1972 — and making it a concern of its own.

No Austrian side has matched what followed. Seven championship titles, the first in 2003 and the most recent in 2021, make Alpla HC Hard the country's most successful handball club, with five ÖHB Cups and a record six Austrian Super Cups stacked alongside them. The run has held without interruption since promotion in 1997/98; Hard has not dropped back down since.

Robert Weber is the name attached to the club's best European week, the 2003/04 run to the Champions League group stage. A run to the EHF Challenge Cup final followed in 2007/08.

The club plays in the Sporthalle am See, which replaced a string of school gymnasiums when it opened in 2005 and holds around 2,300 to 2,400 people across seated and standing areas. Across the water from nowhere in particular but close enough to Bregenz to matter, Hard's derby with Bregenz Handball — the Ländle-Derby — is the fixture that still draws the hall to capacity.

Under Hannes Jón Jónsson, the Red Devils go into the new season defending their status as the benchmark of the Handball Liga Austria.