Rugby team

Maccabi Ashdod

Club · Israel · Liga Alef

«The Dolphins»

184 Matches

60 wins

55 draws

69 losses

231–235 Goals

−4 Difference

1.3 Scored per game

Form W L D D L D

Ashdod's Maccabi Union set the club up in 1961 to give the port city a football side of its own, and for two decades it stayed that way before a merger with Beitar Ashdod in 1981 folded it into Maccabi Ironi Ashdod. That name lasted less than twenty years: in 1999 the club merged again, this time with Hapoel Ashdod, and disappeared into F.C. Ashdod. It took until 2015 for the old identity to return, when supporters rebuilt Maccabi Ashdod as a fan-owned club and started again from Liga Gimel, the sixth tier.

The honours belong almost entirely to the years before the mergers. Liga Artzit, the fourth tier, was won four times — 1966–67, 1981–82, 1988–89, and, after the refounding, 2018–19 — a gap of three decades between the third and fourth title that says something about how long the reconstruction took. There were also Liga Bet titles in 1979–80 and 2015–16, the second coming almost immediately after the club's return to senior football, and a Liga Gimel championship in 1976–77.

Home games are played at the Yud-Alef Stadium, known locally as Ashdod Municipal Stadium, in front of yellow and blue shirts that have carried the nickname "The Dolphins" since the club's earliest days. Across the city, Hapoel Ashdod remains the old rival, and the Ashdod Derby still draws the sharper edge among the club's fixtures.

Before the 1999 merger swallowed the club's name, a teenage Yossi Benayoun was already coming through its ranks, years before West Ham and Liverpool knew who he was.

Latest results

All matches

9 Sep	Liga Alef	FC Jerusalem A	1:1	D
3 Sep	Liga Alef	Hapoel Herzliya H	1:2	L
25 Apr	Liga Alef	Shimshon Tel Aviv H
18 Apr	Liga Alef	Maccabi Kiryat Gat A
10 Apr	Liga Alef	Dimona H
4 Apr	Liga Alef	Nordia Jerusalem A