Servette

The men's section of Servette began as a breakaway: gymnasts from ProPatria split off to form a handball wing under the Servette Club banner, with Georges Curchod as first president, and the date attached to that meeting, 27 February 1952, is the one the club counts from. For nearly two decades the men's team held its own in the Ligue Nationale B, the country's second tier, before dropping after 1970 into the 1ère ligue and then lower still. A women's section followed in 1966, reaching the Swiss National League for two seasons before settling into interregional football through the 1990s and into the early 2000s.

One night stands out from the rest: in 1957 the club played Austria's Graz in front of 7,000 spectators at the Stade des Charmilles, squeezed into the interval of a Servette FC fixture against Anderlecht.

The rivalry that still matters locally is with CS Chênois Genève, and their meetings go by the name Derby Genevois. Servette play out of the Salle Omnisports at the Centre sportif de la Queue d'Arve, sharing the garnet-and-white identity of the football club next door, right down to the Grenats nickname.

What the club has never managed, across more than seventy years, is a trophy: no Swiss Championship, no Cup, nothing to put alongside the football side's honours.