Yenisey-STM Krasnoyarsk

Avangard Stadium holds barely 2,643 people, a small ground for a club that has spent much of the last two decades winning everything Russian rugby offers, and for the biggest fixtures Yenisey-STM has instead filled the 15,000-capacity Central Stadium across town. The gap between the two grounds says something about how the club is watched at home: routine league games in a tight bowl on one bank of the Yenisei, derbies against Krasny Yar somewhere far larger.

The club did not start under this name. It was formed in 1975 as Trud, became Sibtyazhmash three years later after the Siberian Heavy Machinery plant that backed it, and only took the name Yenisey-STM on 12 April 2000, folding the river into the old initials rather than dropping them. The nickname stuck regardless — Tyazhyolaya Mashina, the Heavy Machine, a label the factory gave it decades before the current badge existed.

Little separates Yenisey-STM from the rest of Russian rugby by now: thirteen championships, ten cups, three Supercups and back-to-back European Continental Shield titles in 2017 and 2018. The one fixture that still carries genuine tension is the Krasnoyarsk derby against Krasny Yar, the so-called Battle of the Banks, named for the two stadiums sitting on opposite sides of the river rather than for anything decided on paper.

Alexander Pervukhin has been the constant through most of that success. He took charge in 1992, stayed until 2014, then returned in 2019, and the run of titles either side of his spells at the helm is not a coincidence anyone in Krasnoyarsk needs explained to them.