HNK Segesta
HNK Segesta is a Croatian football club located in the city of Sisak. It is named after the Illyrian settlement Segesta from which modern city of Sisak developed. Segesta is one of the oldest Croatian football clubs, although there are no written records of its precise founding date, the first mention in a news outlet is from year 1909, which makes the club older than many a famous side in the country, and definitely one among the oldest mentioned clubs in the country's history. History. The first written trace of "Segesta" can be found in the weekly  Novi Sisački Glas from the 8th of August 1909, when a club named Segesta played a match against Concordia Zagreb. The most important information about the club and people who organized it can be found only on the occasion of the celebration of its 20th anniversary. That anniversary was marked from the 26th to the 29th of June 1927, when the first club playground was also inaugurated. The event was covered by the local weekly magazine "Hrvatske novine" and some of the original founders were interviewed and claimed the club was created in June or early July 1906 by a  group of school students: The story goes that 12 year old Ivo Stipčić and about twenty of his friends gathered at Ivo's uncle Ivan Šešek (today's Ivana Kukuljevića-Sakcinskog Street, number 4) inn, and decided to found a sport club. The founders agreed that the first president of the club would be the owner of the ball, that is Ivo Stipčić, and "Segesta" was chosen as the name of the club after the name of the old Celtic-Illyrian settlement in the area of Sisak - Segestica. Since the members of the club were mostly pupils and students who  stayed in Sisak during the summer school holidays, it was named "Holiday Sports Club Segesta". The weekly magazine "Sisak" in a 1912 edition featured a list of Sisak-based football clubs, and Segesta is said to exist only through holidays, and the following year the weekly Posavac says of Segesta that it was "the first club in Sisak" and that it "kept somewhat afloat and functioned". The Zagreb-based newspaper Šport from 1919 mentions Segesta as "the first Sisak-based club, Holiday sports club Segesta". Thus the precise and real founding date is not sure, due to a lack of  any documentation about the happening. With the establishment of the communist regime in Jugoslavia, Segesta, as all other sport clubs in the country gets dissolved by the communist authorities, only for Sport Club Naprijed to be established in its place. The club will play as Naprijed between 1946 and 1952, when it is renamed Segesta again and since then it plays in the lower leagues of the Yugoslav competitions. In the 1977/78 season, Segesta achieved great success by winning the title of Croatian champion-region north. With this success, she achieved the right to play in the finals of the  Croatian Championship with the champion of the Croatian Football League - Region South, NK Solin. That match was automatically a qualification to enter the 2nd Federal Football League. The first match was played in Sisak on June 18, 1978. There were about eight thousand spectators at the "Bratstvo-jedinstvo" stadium, and Segesta won 2-0 with goals from Josip Cavrić. In the return match in Solin, the hosts won 1-0, which was enough for Segesti to celebrate the club's greatest success since World War II. In 1978, Segesta achieved another notable result, when the club won the title of  Croatian amateur champion. In independent Croatia, Segesta played in the first state league several times. In the 1992/93 season it finished in 10th place; 1993/94 in 9th place; 1994/95 in 8th place; 1995/96 in 6th place in the first A league; in 1996/97 im 11th place, after which it no longer managed to stay in the first league. The club played in the Croatian Football Cup in the 1992/93 and 1993/94 seasons (quarterfinals), 1994/95 (round of 16), 1996/97 (round of 16), 1998/99 (quarterfinals), 2000/01 (round of 16), as well as in 2001/02, 2002/03, 2003/04. Recent seasons. Key. Top scorer  shown in bold when he was also top scorer for the division. European record. Segesta qualified for the 1996 UEFA Intertoto Cup, reaching the final stage before losing over two legs to Silkeborg IF on the away goals rule.