Stadion Grünfeld

The ground sits on the flat land east of the lake, in Jona rather than in the older half of the twin town, and that address on Grünfeldstrasse is most of what tells the two apart. Штадион Грюнфельд opened on 24 July 2004, which makes it a young ground by the standards of the Swiss lower divisions — no terracing inherited from an earlier century, no stand named after a benefactor whose lifetime nobody now remembers.

It holds 2,500. That figure matters less as a limit than as a description of what the place is for: a ground built to the size of the club that plays in it, ФК Рапперсвиль-Йона, rather than to the size of a hoped-for future. There is no running track written into the account of it, and the pitch is natural grass — a choice that in this canton means the surface takes what the winter gives it.

Rapperswil and Jona were still administratively separate when the ground opened; the merger of the two into a single municipality came later, and the club carries both names. So the stadium's short history runs alongside a change in what the town is called, which is unusual for a ground that has not yet had to be rebuilt.

What the visitor finds, then, is a compact venue in the canton of St Gallen, three years short of its own quarter-century, doing the ordinary work of a home ground. Cup football has its own rules, and 2,500 is enough to make an occasion of a visiting side; it is not enough to swallow one.