Westfalia Herne

Football club infobox
clubname = SC Westfalia Herne


fullname = Sportclub Westfalia 1904 e.V. Herne
nickname =
founded = 1904
ground = Stadion Am Schloss Strünkende
capacity = 36,500
chairman =
manager =
league = Oberliga Nordrhein-Westfalen (V)
season = 2007-08
position = Oberliga Westfalen (IV), 5th
pattern_la1=_blueshoulders|pattern_b1=|pattern_ra1=_blueshoulders
leftarm1=ffffff|body1=ffffff|rightarm1=ffffff|shorts1=0000ff|socks1=ffffff
pattern_la2=|pattern_b2=|pattern_ra2=
leftarm2=ffffff|body2=ffffff|rightarm2=ffffff|shorts2=ffffff|socks2=ffffff

SC Westfalia Herne is a German football club based in Herne, North Rhine-Westphalia. The club was founded on June 13 1904 by the sons of the more well-heeled residents of the city as a rival to the worker-based club "SV Sodingen".

History

After World War I and occupation of the Ruhr by the French in 1923, the club was dissolved, but still carried on unofficially. It was reconstituted in 1925 through fusion with "Fortuna Herne" to play as "Westfalia Fortuna Herne". The union was good for the club, which advanced to upper league play in 1930, and made it as far as the semi-finals in the national championship the next season. When German football was reorganized under the Third Reich, "Herne" was not selected for play in the first tier Gauliga, but did manage to play their way into the premier circuit the next year. They competed at that level until the collapse of the league system at the end of World War II.

After the war, "Herne" again found itself left out of the newly re-organized upper league until they managed to earn promotion in 1954. They then went on to win the Oberliga West in 1959 and finish second in 1960, but did not have much success in the subsequent national championship playoff rounds. Despite delivering consistently solid results in the post-war period, the club missed qualifying for the Bundesliga – Germany's new professional football league – in 1963 with an unexpectedly poor finish in the 1962-63 season that saw the team relegated.

Sixteen years of mediocre play in tiers II and III followed. Sponsorship by petrol company Goldin Imperium helped keep the team in the 2.Bundesliga-Nord through the late 70s as "SC Westfalia Goldin Herne". When the firm went bankrupt in late 1979 the club was forced to withdraw after just one match of the 1979-80 season. They picked up play next season in the Amateur Oberliga Westfalen (III) before slipping again, this time to the IV and V level divisions. The club was promoted after the 2004-05 season and currently plays in the Oberliga Nordrhein-Westfalen (V).

In popular culture

In the 1980 German movie "Theo gegen den rest der Welt", staring Marius Müller-Westernhagen, Theo, the main caracter, has tickets for his "game of the century", a DFB-Pokal match Westfalia Herne versus FC Schalke 04 but misses the game due to his truck being stolen. In reality, there was no such game in this era.

Team trivia

* The team plays today in blue in white, but the original team colours were red and white.
* Early German football saw numerous leagues come and go – "Westfalia" played in nineteen different leagues in its first twenty-nine years of existence.

External links

* [http://www.westfalia-herne.net Official team site]
* [http://www.abseits-soccer.com/clubs/herne.html The Abseits Guide to German Soccer]