Nyon Handball La Cote

Salle du Cossy sits on Chemin de Précossy, and it is here that Nyon Handball La Côte built a team from scratch rather than inherit one. The club did not spring from a founding meeting so much as a falling-out: in 2020, disagreements inside HBC Nyon, the town's existing handball club, pushed a group to break away and start again under their own name, while the old club carried on as SG Nyon.

Navy blue and white have been the colours since that split, and the early years were spent working up through the lower divisions rather than chasing silverware. The clearest mark of that progress came in 2023, when the men's senior side won promotion to the 2. Liga, still some distance from the Swiss League but a first concrete step for a club not yet out of its infancy.

Coach Lorenzen's side has since leaned on players such as Wagner, Hardy and the Barraine brothers to hold their own at that level, in a squad still finding its identity rather than defending a reputation.

None of that matters more, locally, than the fixture with SG Nyon. Because the two clubs share a birthplace and a falling-out rather than a stretch of history, the derby nyonnais carries a weight out of proportion to the standings — a game between neighbours who used to be one club, played out now as two.