Thisted

What began that New Year's Day was an attempt to give the region a single side worth watching, drawn from the clubs already playing in and around the town on the north Jutland coast. Thisted FC — TFC to most people there — took the name of the town and the nickname of the wider district: Thyboerne, the people of Thy.

That distinction between town and region matters more than it might look. Thisted is the market town; Thy is the strip of land behind the dunes that runs up to the Skagerrak, and a supporter driving in from a village 20 minutes away is coming to a club that claims them too.

The name that travels furthest belongs to a player rather than a season. Jesper Grønkjær came through the club's youth set-up before leaving for a career that took him to Chelsea and Atlético Madrid — the sort of route that turns a Second Division club's academy into something scouts keep an eye on.

Home is the Sparekassen Thy Arena, which holds around 4,000 — a figure that only reads as small until you set it against the size of the town it serves.

The club's competitive life runs through the Second Division and the DBU Cup, and neither has yet produced anything to put in a cabinet. There are no trophies in the record, no promotion to the top flight, no cup run that ended in Copenhagen with a medal. Nor is there a fixture that stops the region — no derby carrying the weight that Thisted's neighbours might have supplied, had geography placed a rival close enough to hate properly. What the club has instead is a district that answers to one name, a ground that fills when the football is worth it, and a first honour still waiting to be won.