Saint-Raphaël Var Handball

Down the coast, matches against Pays d'Aix Université Club Handball still get called the "classico" by people in Saint-Raphaël.

The club did not start as handball at all. The Malpasset dam collapsed in 1959, and out of the reconstruction that followed, the volleyball sections of Étoile Sportive Fréjussienne and Stade Raphaélois merged into the Association Sportive Fréjus Saint-Raphaël. René Cenni set up a handball section inside that multi-sport body in 1963, with Marcel Tafani as its first president, and it took until 1995 for handball to break away on its own under the name Saint-Raphaël Var Handball.

Promotion to the Starligue came in 2004, a first-ever appearance in the top flight, undone by relegation the following season. The club came back for good in 2007 by winning the French D2 Championship, and from there built toward the two seasons that still define it among "Les Rafous": a runner-up finish in the French Championship in 2016 and a losing final in the EHF Cup in 2018. Both finals came under Joël da Silva, who coached from 2014 to 2019; before him, Christian Gaudin spent nine years turning the club into a fixture of the top four. The Coupe de France has stayed out of reach throughout, with semi-finals in 1996 and 2003 as close as it has come.