Jørpedal FK
Jørpedal Fotbollsklubb, known as Jørpedal FK, or simply Jørpedal for short, was a professional Olmerian football club based in Neuvesto for 63 years from 1933 - 1996. The team were based at the Olejern Arena for all of their existence, named after the park they played in prior to becoming professional, which was in turn named after local legend Sven Olejern.
 Logo of Jørpedal FK from 1974 untill it's disbandment in 1996 | |||
| Full name | Jørpedal Fotbollsklubb | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Nickname(s) | The Jørps | ||
| Founded |
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| Dissolved | 1996 | ||
| Stadium | Olejern Arena | ||
| Capacity | 33,600 | ||
| Final Season (1995) | Liga Nul, 14th | ||
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The club won the top division of the OLF, the Første Liga, 7 times between 1935 and 1984, making them the joint 5th most successful club in the leagues history.
From 1990 onwards, growing financial difficulties meant the team were relegated 4 times in just 5 seasons as they sold most of their players in an attempt to survive bankruptcy. Eventually, in January 1996, now playing in the Liga Nul, the club were declared bankrupt by the Olmerian sports regulators FOSR (Financial and Operational Sports Regulation), and forced to dissolve after supporters failed to raise the finances needed to buy out the club.
History
Foundation and Early Years (1897-1933)
Jørpedal was founded as an amateur club at the end of the 19th century, under the official title Jørpedal Amateur FK. The club was named eponymously with it's home borough in the southern suburbs of Neuvesto, an area where football had rich cultural roots, having been played on the streets in casual capacities for several centuries. The decision to form an official amateur club came amidst a growth in local amateur competitions which required official registration, in contrast to the entirely informal games organised previously by the unofficial local team under the same name. Funding from local small-shot businessman Martin Breivik, who was to run the club, allowed the team to buy the goalposts and other equipment necessary to register as an official team.
In their first three years as a registered team the club continued in much the same vein, playing in the occasional local cup competitions, in addition to continued series of friendlies with neighbouring teams. These friendlies attracted little local attention, and with the teams best cup performance being a single victory to take them to the second round, there was little for the locals to get excited about.
The team spent these early years playing home games at the local recreational park, in a large field with no designated stands or facilities. In 1900, locals contributed to renovating the back rooms of the parks pavilion to form makeshift changing rooms leading out on to the pitch, in the hope of making the set-up more appealing to visiting teams. In fact despite the continued lack of facilities for fans, from 1900 onwards home games drew substantial crowds from local residents, sometimes reaching over 400 people gathered standing around the park. Soon several small food stands could be seen popping up at every game to make the most of the business opportunity.
As a result of this attendance, Jørpedal players quickly became local celebrities and places on the team were highly sought after. The clubs had initially been managed and run simultaneously by Breivik, but in order to expand scope of competition and with support growing there became a need to expand the management team to match. In 1901 he appointed Harvey Øystein as the teams head coach, in addition to a small team of 4 volunteer coaches and one physio to manage the teams affairs. This expansion, along with the development of the home ground, allowed for the club to grow in stature and into a fully fledged amateur team.
In the fragmented footballing environment of the early 20th centuries, there were no unified national competitions, and amateur and professional (of which there were still very few) teams alike competed in smaller regional competitions and sporadic larger ones. As such, Jørpedal's seasons from 1900 until 1933 consisted of participation in such competitions, although often with extreme unpredictability due to weather events, organisational challenges and travel issues.
The club played in the annual Neuvesto Cup in all but 5 of these years, competing with teams from across the capital. With the already professional Avonemor Idrettslag and Nyskov both in the same city, the competition was one of the toughest in the nation at the time. Despite this, Jørpedal secured the trophy on 6 separate occasions, most memorably beating Nyskov 4-1 in front of 2,500 away fans in the 1921 final, to make them the 3rd most successful team in the competition, and the most successful amateur team. This quickly became the reputation of the local borough club; a team of "giant-killers" able to compete in the same league as the elite professionals, and the players, staff, and borough all received significant media coverage following any successes.
It was this reputation that meant in 1926, under the auspices of the newly formed football confederation, the OFF, Jørpedal were invited to participate in the Haasta Cup (English: Challenger Cup). The competition was intended to lay the groundworks for the "Great Web", which would come 3 years later, by connecting amateur and professional teams nationally and encouraging competition between the two, where outside of Neuvesto it had been lacking. For the initial cup, the OFF selected the 6 professional teams at the time, along with 2 amateur "challengers": Jørpedal and Aletv Samfet FK from Lundholm who had famously beaten the professional Lundholm Byson 3-1 in a controversial "challenge match" that supposedly inspired the Haasta Cup.
Jørpedal beat Strond on away goals in their two-legged quarterfinal, after 1-1 and 2-2 draws home and away respectively. The semifinal draw pit them against Aletv Samfet, who had beaten Lundholm B for the second time in their quarterfinal. The first leg of the matchup in Lundholm was a controversial affair fought in heavy rainfall, on a pitch that quickly became a mud bath. The game marked the first time amateur teams in different cities had played each other in formal competition, and the largest distance travelled to a game (Neuvesto to Lundholm) With the conditions so adverse, play degraded into chaos and several scraps broke out between players. In the end, the scoreline ended 2-0 to Aletv after two controversial penalties, while Jørpedal claimed they would had scored three goals of their own had the Aletv keeper not purposely muddied the goal-line to obstruct shots.
This controversy carried forward to the second leg in Neuvesto, which, despite being in better conditions, was similarly feisty. While the first leg had been played with very few travelling fans due to the distance, over 1,000 Aletv Samfet fans travelled to the reverse fixture. They joined a record host crowd of 3,400 in Olejern park, and overflowing into surrounding streets with the park unable to cope with such numbers. Tensions amongst both fans and players were high, with Jørpedal fans particularly angry about the perceived injustice of their first leg defeat. Small level scuffles between the two sets of fans occurred throughout the game, with increasing intensity as Jørpedal scored 3 times to take an aggregate lead. Play was suspended in the 75th minute following Jørpedal's 3rd goal while local police separated several groups of opposing fans. However, while the police had been expecting a large crowd and some small-scale violence, they were unprepared and unequipped to cope with the fight that broke out at the final whistle. The fight, which became known as the Haasta Disaster, resulted in the deaths of 1 fan and left a further 406 injured, in addition to 39 policemen and 43 passers-by. The disaster remains one of the worst instances of football hooliganism in Olmerian history.