Ruch Chorzów


Ruch Chorzów is a Polish association football club based in Chorzów, Upper Silesia. It is one of the most successful football teams in Poland: fourteen-time national champions, and three-time winners of the Polish Cup. Currently the team plays in the Polish Fourth Division. Their stadium capacity is 9,300 seats. Ruch Chorzów has also had a very successful female handball team.

History

The club was founded on 20 April 1920 in Bismarkhuta, one of the many heavily industrialised municipalities in the eastern part of Upper Silesia, a disputed province between Poland and Germany. The main incentive was an appeal of the Polish Plebiscite Committee a few months earlier that led to creation of around one hundred sport associations. It took place in between the first and second Silesian Uprisings, to which the name Ruch is a supposed cover reference. The Polish word :en:wiktionary:ruch|ruch is however also a common noun for movement, not as strongly associated with Polishness as names of many other clubs established after the appeal. On the other hand, the club's first match, a 3:1 win against Orzeł Józefowiec, was played on 3 May 1920, the day of the first Polish Constitution. After the Upper Silesia plebiscite and the third Silesian Uprising in 1921 Bismarkhuta became part of Poland and the Silesian Voivodeship. The municipality was renamed to Wielkie Hajduki on 1 January 1923, hence the club was known as Ruch Wielkie Hajduki until another merger into the town Chorzów in the early 1939, with a short period in 1923 after the fusion with the older local German club Bismarckhütter Ballspiel Club, when it was known as Ruch BBC Wielkie Hajduki. After the merger the team played its games on the former BBC's pitch known as na Kalinie. The popular nickname of the club Niebiescy clung to the team already in the 1920s.
In autumn of 1920 Ruch won the promotion to the nascent Silesian Klasa A. The Blues were third out of fourteen teams in its first season, unfinished due to the third Silesian Uprising. The next year Ruch won the championship of the Silesian Klasa A and represented the region in the 1922 Polish Football Championship. In 1924 the club finished second in the regional top league, behind AKS Królewska Huta, before 1924 considered German and known as Verein für Rasenspiele Königshütte, the first team Ruch had developed a local rivalry with. In 1925 the Silesian Klasa A did not play, instead Stanisław Flieger's Cup took place, ultimately won by Ruch, which gave the side a start in the only interwar Polish Cup competition in :pl:Puchar Polski w piłce nożnej |1926. On 4 July 1926 Józef Sobota, before 1920 a BBC's player, became the first Ruch's player of the Polish National Team, who also scored a goal. In the same year, two weeks after the national Cup Ruch won for the second time the regional Klasa A, firmly establishing itself as one of the strongest football clubs in this densely populated region and as such it was among the founding clubs of the Polish national league in 1927. In 1933 Ruch won its first Championship as the first side from Silesia, with all the players who were born not further as a few kilometers from the na Kalinie pitch. Thus the first truly golden era began. The local steel mill began to financially support the side. In the winter of 1933 the most noteworthy players such as Edmund Giemsa, Teodor Peterek and Gerard Wodarz were joined by legendary Ernst Wilimowski, bought from 1. FC Kattowitz, who with Peterek and Wodarz were collectively nicknamed the three kings and helped to win another 4 championships. On 1 November 1934 the club, as the last in the league, employed its first coach, Gustav Wieser. The side was also a leader in the unfinished season 1939. The successes rendered the club the most popular in the voivodeship and accelerated building of the new stadium in the years 1934-1935, the current Stadion Miejski.
After the German occupation of Poland in 1939, the club was officially discontinued but unofficially was simply renamed Bismarckhütter SV 99 and joined the Gauliga Oberschlesien in 1941. The club was officially re-established after the war. In 1947 Ruch won the regional championships. In 1948, under communist pressure, the club was renamed Unia Chorzów, in 1955 it became Unia-Ruch, and finally in 1956 returned to the name Ruch. As Unia the club finished third in the first season of the reactivated national league in 1948 and in 1950 as the second team. In 1951 the club won the reactivated Polish Cup edition and were rewarded with the title of the National Champions. The next two years the club also won the title, first in 1952 after final against Polonia Bytom, another local bitter rival, and in 1953 after finishing the league on the top position. The most renowned player of that era was Gerard Cieślik, who dedicated his whole life to the club and became its icon.
The years 1957-1966 are considered a lost decade, completely overshadowed by the successes of the new biggest regional rival, Górnik Zabrze, even though the club won the championships in 1960. A record of its kind in the national football history as the team consisted of only 14 players, 11 of whom originated in the town of Chorzów. The turn of the tide came in the season 1967/68 when Ruch won the 10th championship title breaking Górnik Zabrze's streak of five consecutive titles. Another golden era for the Blues arrived in the early 1970s with Michal Vičan as a coach. In 1972/73 the club finished second, in 1973/73 they won the only double in the history and advanced up to the quarter-finals of the UEFA Cup. In 1974/75 they again won the league and qualified to the quarter-finals of the European Cup. The most praised players of that times were Bronisław Bula, Zygmunt Maszczyk and Joachim Marx.
These successes were followed by a bad financial plight and mediocre results until 1978/79, when the club won its 13th Championship title. In the 1980s the club was one of the poorest in the national league. The worst came in the season 1986/87, when the club, the only one in the country which so far played all the seasons of the official national top league, was relegated to the second tier. Especially shifty were the circumstances of the relegation decider, against Lechia Gdańsk, when Ruch's goalkeeper Janusz Jojko scored an infamous and bizarre own goal and the club lost the game 1:2. After one year Ruch returned to the top flight as winners of the seconed league and won the 14th Championship title, as the second freshly-promoted club in the national history, a feat, especially as it was still one of the poorest clubs in the top tier and over half of the players were home-grown, including e.g. Dariusz Gęsior and the most renowned Krzysztof Warzycha, who was also, with 24 goals, the top scorer of the season.
After the political turnover in Poland in 1989 Ruch did not fare well for the first two seasons. The money from the transfer of Krzysztof Warzycha to Panathinaikos A.O. finished quickly. The team began to compete with the top teams first in 1991/92 finishing in the fifth spot, fourth the next year, furthermore the second team reached the Polish cup final. Ruch was demoted for the second time in the history in the season 1994/95. As before the stay in the second tier lasted one season. While playing in the second league Ruch won its third Polish Cup trophy. In 1998 Ruch reached the final of the UEFA Intertoto Cup and in the season 1999/2000 finished third in the league. The crisis came in 2002/2003 when the club was relegated from the top tier for the third time and in the next season was for the first time in history in danger of being demoted to the third tier, however the club won the relegation play-offs against Stal Rzeszów. In 2005 the club was restructured as spółka akcyjna. The Blues won the promotion to the top flight in the season 2006/2007. In 2009 the side reached Polish Cup final, the next year The Blues finished third in the league. The best season in the recent history was 2011/2012 when Ruch was vice-champion and reached the final of the national cup.

Achievements

Out on loan

Managerial history


Ruch in Europe

Supporters and rivalries

Ruch's popularity exploded in the 1930s and remained strong up to this date, especially in Upper Silesia. A specific subculture of szalikowcy developed in the 1970s, as elsewhere in the country, but in the region only after it first appeared among the fans of Polonia Bytom. There are also hooligans and ultras.
Expressions of Upper Silesian identity are often displayed with golden-blue flagues, on banners or in chants.
Ruch's supporters maintain friendships with fans of Widzew Łódź, Elana Toruń, Atlético Madrid. The biggest animosity is held against followers Górnik Zabrze, GKS Katowice, Polonia Bytom, Zagłębie Sosnowiec, Legia Warszawa, Lech Poznań.
Notable individual supporters of Ruch are, among others:

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