Berliner SV 92 Rugby

Berliner SV 92 Rugby
Full name Berliner Sport-Verein 1892 e.V.
Union German Rugby Federation
Founded 1892 (club)
1936 (rugby department)
Location Berlin, Germany
Chairman Manfred Neumann
Coach(es) Marek Sniowski
League(s) Rugby-Regionalliga (III)
2014–15 DRV-Pokal North/East, 4th
Official website
www.bsv92rugby.de

The Berliner SV 92 Rugby is a German rugby union club from Berlin, currently playing in the Rugby-Bundesliga. It is part of a larger club, the Berliner SV 92, which also offers other sports like association football, baseball and basketball.

History

Rugby union within the BSV 92 club begun in 1936, the year of the Olympic games in Berlin and the tournament there. The rugby department of Tennis Borussia Berlin, having existed for just eight years and won five Berlin championships in this time, collectively left the club to join BSV. The reasons for the move were the lack of support the rugby players got at Tennis Borussia and the fact that most players lived closer to BSV, which was based in Wilmersdorf, while Tennis Borussia had their playing fields in Niederschönhausen.[1]

The club provided a conveniently located playing field at Lochowdamm for the rugby players, who were led by Paul König. The new department continued its dominance in the Berlin championship, winning it once more in 1937 and providing the core to Berlin selection teams out of the eight rugby clubs in the city in the years before the war.[1]

With Erwin Thiesies and "Jonny" Richter, the club provided two players to the team that achieved Germanys last rugby victory over France, a 3-0 on 27 March 1938 in Frankfurt am Main.[2]

The Second World War brought an end to Berlin as a centre of German rugby and BSV 92 lost many of its players during the war. It nevertheless resumed play, temporarily under the name of SG Wilmersdorf, after the war, winning two more Berlin championships, in 1947 and 1948 before being restored to its old name in 1949.[1]

The club's greatest moment came in 1948, when it reached the first post-Second World War final of the German rugby union championship, which it lost 0-30 to TSV Victoria Linden. It also marked the last appearance of a club from Berlin in the German final for over 40 years, until 1989, when the Berliner RC lost to the same club.[3]

Post-war rugby in Berlin mainly survived through the help of the allied occupation forces and the building of the Berlin wall in 1961 made playing the sport in the city even harder, cutting off many players in the now separate parts of the city. BSV continued to be a successful side in Berlin until 1956, winning all but the 1955 championship during this time, but none after that.[1]

In 1965, the club suffered another blow when it lost many of its players associated with the local police to a new rugby department at the police sport club. The club managed to compensate for this loss in the early 1970s by developing a successful youth department.[1]

BSV 92 was not part of the new Rugby-Bundesliga, formed in 1971 and remained in local competitions instead. It reached national level however in 2007, when it earned promotion to the 2nd Rugby-Bundesliga North/East, the second tier of German rugby. At this level, the club lasted for two seasons before returning to the tier-three Rugby-Regionalliga in 2009, where it played for two seasons. After a second place and the league champions, RK 03 Berlin II, declining promotion, BSV moved back up instead.

A league reform in 2012 allowed the club promotion to the Bundesliga as the league was expanded from ten to 24 teams. BSV 92 finished fourth in their group in the 2012-13 season and qualified for the north/east division of the championship round, where it came eighth. The club opted to not play their first round play-off match, citing player shortage, and was thereby knocked out of the championship with the game awarded 50-0 to the opposition.[4]

The club qualified for the championship round once more in 2013–14 but missed out on the play-offs after finishing seventh in its division. In the 2014–15 season the club finished fourth in the north-east DRV-Pokal group and was knocked out by RC Rottweil in the quarter finals of the play-offs after a first round victory over TGS Hausen. For the 2015–16 season the club dropped back to the tier three Rugby-Regionalliga.

Club honours

Recent seasons

Recent seasons of the club:[5]

Year Division Position
1997-98 2nd Rugby-Bundesliga North/East (II) 7th
1998-99 2nd Rugby-Bundesliga North/East 6th
2nd Rugby-Bundesliga North/East relegation round 4th Relegated
1999-2000
2000-01
2001-02
2002-03
2003-04 Rugby-Regionalliga East (North) (III) 5th
Placings round 1 3rd
2004-05 Rugby-Regionalliga East A 5th
Placings round 1 1st
2005-06 Rugby-Regionalliga East A 4th
Placings round 1 1st
2006-07 Rugby-Regionalliga East A 1st
North/East championship round 3rd Promoted
2007–08 2nd Rugby-Bundesliga North/East (II) 9th
2008–09 2nd Rugby-Bundesliga North/East 9th Relegated
2009–10 Rugby-Regionalliga East (III) 2nd
Rugby-Regionalliga East A 1st
2010–11 Rugby-Regionalliga East 2nd Promoted
2011–12 2nd Rugby-Bundesliga North/East 7th Promoted
2012–13 Rugby-Bundesliga qualification round – East 4th
Rugby-Bundesliga championship round – North-East 8th Round of sixteen
2013–14 Rugby-Bundesliga qualification round – East 3rd
Rugby-Bundesliga championship round – North-East 7th
2014–15 Rugby-Bundesliga qualification round – East 5th
DRV-Pokal – North-East 4th — Quarter finals — Relegated
2015–16 Rugby-Regionalliga East (III)

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Rugby im BSV 1892 (German) BSV 92 Rugby website - History, accessed: 12 April 2010
  2. Rugby zwischen den beiden Weltkriegen (German) DRV website, accessed: 10 April 2010
  3. Die Deutschen Meister der Männer (German) DRV website - German champions, accessed: 12 April 2010
  4. Bundesliga-Achtelfinals: Spielabsagen in Meisterrunde und DRV-Pokal (German) totalrugby.de, published: 2 May 2013, accessed: 5 May 2013
  5. RugbyWeb Ergebnisarchiv (German) rugbyweb.de - Results archive, accessed: 24 July 2012

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Sunday, September 13, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.