Gnas

Gnas comes into this season as champions of the Oberliga Süd Ost, the tier below the Landesliga, after finishing the 2024/25 campaign nine points clear of the field. The title was sealed with a 5:1 win over SV Frannach/Edelstauden, and it puts the club back in the Steirische Landesliga, the level where it had already made itself a fixture for over a decade before dropping down.

That earlier run in the Landesliga was built quietly rather than dramatically: Gnas came up in 2012/13 and stayed competitive without ever quite breaking through, finishing third in 2015/16 and runner-up in 2018/19. The closest the club has come to a trophy outside the league table was the Steirercup final in 2014/15, lost 0:3 to FC Lankowitz — the one cup run that took Gnas beyond its own district.

The football side traces back to 1949, when it was formed as Turn- u. Sport-Union Gnas, part of a broader gymnastics and sports union rather than a standalone football club. It has played ever since at the Sportplatz Gnas, a ground that holds around 1,500.

Promotion settled, the task now is to hold a place back in the Landesliga rather than bounce straight down again — the pattern for a club whose history has been one of establishing itself at a level and defending it, more than chasing anything higher.