Slonim

The ground on Pushkin Street carries the name Yunost and holds 2,220 people. The club has never played anywhere else. Through five changes of name it kept the same patch of the Grodno region, and the address never moved.

The line back to 1969 runs through a factory team called Torpedo, then Start, then Albertin, then a set of initials, and finally Kommunalnik. The strongest of them came in 1999, when Kommunalnik won the First League. Three years earlier the same side had finished second in that division.

What exists now is not quite that club. In 2013 Kommunalnik merged with Beltransgaz, a side that had only been around since 2009. It took the name Slonim-2017 four years later. Since the merger there has been nothing to put on the honours board at national level — the silver in the Second League in 2012 and the bronze the year before belong to the older story, as does the regional title of 2009.

Blue and yellow on the shirts, and a nickname that has outlasted every rebrand — the Elephants , which is what you hear from the terraces and what the club prints on itself.