Ruch Chorzow

Ruch Chorzow (Polish pronunciation: [ˈrux ˈxɔʐuf]) is a Polish association football club based in Chorzow, 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 Third Division. Ruch plays at the Stadion Miejski with a capacity of 9,300 seats. Ruch Chorzow has also had a very successful female handball team (9 times national champions).

History

The club was founded on 20 April 1920 in Bismarkhuta (German Bismarckhutte, historically Hajduki), 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 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 (like Polonia, Powstaniec etc.). On the other hand, the club's first match, a 3:1 win against Orzel Jozefowiec, 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 Chorzow (created in 1934 from amalgamation of Krolewska Huta, Chorzow and Hajduki Nowe) in the early 1939, with a short period in 1923 after the fusion with the older local German club Bismarckhutter 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

This page also has a version in other languages :  Рух (Хожув) (russian)