Herner

The Oberliga Nord title of 2017 sits apart from the two that came before it, in 1975 and 1979. The original club went insolvent in 2001; its successor, ESG Herne, followed it into insolvency in 2004 and was struck from the register in 2007. That summer a new body, Herner EV 2007 e.V., started again from the youth and women's teams while the first team played on under a separate operating company, Herner EV Ruhrpott Crusaders GmbH. Promotion back to the Oberliga came in 2008, the operating company went bankrupt in 2011, and the club dropped back to the Regionalliga before buying its own arena and returning to the Oberliga in 2013.

That arena is the Hannibal Arena, known for years as the Gysenberghalle, built after the city decided in 1969 to put an ice hall in the Revierpark Gysenberg. Herner EV was founded the following year, on 13 July 1970, and took its green, white and red from Herne's coat of arms.

Peter Glinka stood in goal for close to 600 of those games across the club's various incarnations and returned in 2024 as club ambassador. Guido Drongowski's number 17 has been retired, and Nils Liesegang wore the captain's armband through more than 200 appearances of his own.

None of it carries the weight of the fixture against ESC Moskitos Essen. The two sides meet as the Ruhrpott-Derby.