Hapoel Le Zion

The oldest fixture in Israeli handball still runs through the same city: Hapoel Rishon meets Maccabi Rishon Le Zion, also known as Maccabi Avishai Motzkin, in the Rishon Le Zion derby.

Mordechai Rozenshtein founded the club in 1968 and coached it himself. Two decades passed before the first trophy arrived — the 1987/88 championship, followed a year later by the State Cup, then the first League-and-Cup double in 1989/90. What came after set the club apart from anyone else in the country: nine championships in a row between 1993 and 2001, seven of them doubles, a run no other Israeli handball side has matched.

That period also took the club abroad. Hapoel Rishon reached the EHF Champions League for the first time in 1998, and two seasons later beat THW Kiel on the way to the quarter-finals.

Idan Maimon belongs to both eras — a player for the club in the late 1990s who later returned on the bench and won more titles as head coach. Asaf Siton now holds that post. Domestic success slowed after 2018, and the wait ran seven years before the 19th championship arrived in 2024/25, restoring the club's grip on a competition it has dominated since the 1990s.

Home games are played at the Nahalat Yehuda Hall, a step down in scale from the trophy count. Before that the team used the Mordechai Rozenshtein Hall, named for the man who started it all, and before that Gan Nuchum Hall. None of it has dimmed what still matters most on the calendar: the derby against Maccabi Rishon Le Zion.