Fuchse

The Hannes-Bammer-Sporthalle in Bruck an der Mur holds a thousand people, and that is only half the ground BT Füchse call home: the club splits its fixtures between there and the Veranstaltungszentrum in Trofaiach. Players call the arena the "Fuchsbau" — the fox den.

The name fits a club stitched together in 2020, when HC Bruck and ATV Trofaiach merged. The club kept both venues rather than choosing one, and it kept the emphasis on raising its own players instead of buying them in — foreign signings stayed rare by design.

That approach paid off almost immediately: in its first season, 2020–21, the newly merged side went straight up into the top-flight Handball Liga Austria. The same season brought a run to the quarter-finals of the ÖHB Cup, ended there by UHK Krems. Thomas Tremmel, who had started out at ATV Trofaiach back in 2005, was still in the squad when the merger finally delivered the promotion the old club had spent years chasing.

Blue and black are the colours, and "#Handballundmehr" — handball and more — is the line the club puts on everything, a nod to the youth work underneath the first team. None of it means as much on derby weekend, though, when BT Füchse face HSG Graz in what both sides call the Styria Derby, the one fixture in the Handball Liga Austria that needs no further introduction in Upper Styria.