Biel Bienne

He was still on the roster in 2022, when the team beat TV Zofingen 9:8 to win the SHV-Grossfeld-Cup, a final that came a year after Biel had lost the same one.

The club itself was stitched together in 1985, when HC Gym Biel and HBC Biel, two sides that had each played in the Swiss top flight, merged into one. The women's section, HWG Biel, joined the setup in 2002. Promotion in 2017 did not hold: Biel dropped back out of the NLB at the end of the 2019/20 season, stayed up only through a special ruling, then went down for good in 2021/22. Since 2022/23 the first team has been playing in the 1. Liga, where it finished third in its opening campaign back at that level.

Valentin Striffeler arrived in 2019 with 15 caps for the Swiss national team already behind him, signing from BSV Bern, and chose to keep playing in Biel rather than wind down elsewhere. That same year brought in Tymoteusz Piątek, a Polish pivot. In 2012 the Swiss Handball Association had already marked the club out with its club award, well before either player put on the shirt.

No fixture on the calendar carries the weight of a settled local rivalry for HS Biel; the games that have mattered most were finals rather than derbies, decided on scorelines like the single goal that separated them from TV Zofingen.