Sportfreunde Ricklingen


The Sportfreunde Ricklingen is a German association football club from the Ricklingen suburb of Hanover, Lower Saxony.
The club's greatest success has been to earn promotion to the tier three Regionalliga Nord in 1996, where it played for three seasons. The club has also made two appearances in the first round of the DFB-Pokal, the German Cup.

History

The club was formed in 1906 as the Freie Turner Ricklingen. The club was outlawed by the Nazis in 1933 but reformed in 1945, now under the current name Sportfreunde Ricklingen.
In 1958 the club won promotion to the highest football league in Lower Saxony, the tier two Amateur-Oberliga Niedersachsen and played at this level until 1964 when the league was reduced from two to one division. A period of three decades followed in which Ricklinge did not play at the highest level of Lower Saxony football.
The team's second rise began in 1993 with promotion to the tier four Verbandsliga Niedersachsen. It finished sixth in the league in 1993–94 which qualified it for the new Oberliga Niedersachsen/Bremen which was established when the Regionalligas were re-formed as the new third tier of the league system in 1994. Sportfreunde came fourth in the Oberliga in its first season there but won the league the season after and won promotion to the Regionalliga Nord. In this era the club also took part in the first round of the DFB-Pokal on two occasions, in 1992–93 and 1993–94, reaching the third round in its first appearance.
Sportfreunde played at Regionalliga level for three seasons, with an eleventh place in 1996–97 as its best result. The team's results declined after this and the club was relegated from the Regionalliga again in 1999. It was relegated from the Oberliga the season after when it came only sixteenth and found itself in the western division of the Verbandsliga Niedersachsen for 2000–01 where it finished one rank above a relegation spot. The following season it came only seventeenth in the Verbandsliga and was relegated from this league, too.
Sportfreunde Ricklingen has since fallen as far as the tier eight Kreisliga Hannover but success in the Kreisliga promotion round in 2014 took Sportfreunde back to the Bezirksliga where it lasted for two seasons before dropping back down again.

Honours

The team's honours:
The recent season-by-season performance of the club:
YearDivisionTierPosition
1994–95Oberliga Niedersachsen/BremenIV4th
1995–96Oberliga Niedersachsen/BremenIV1st↑
1996–97Regionalliga NordIII11th
1997–98Regionalliga NordIII13th
1998–99Regionalliga NordIII18th↓
1999–2000Oberliga Niedersachsen/BremenIV16th↓
2000–01Niedersachsenliga WestV13th
2001–02Niedersachsenliga WestV17th↓
2002–03Landesliga HannoverVI1st↑
2003–04Niedersachsenliga WestV17th↓
2004–05Landesliga HannoverVI6th
2005–06Landesliga HannoverVI2nd↑
2006–07Niedersachsenliga WestV14th↓
2007–08Bezirksoberliga HannoverVI9th
2008–09Bezirksoberliga HannoverVI4th
2009–10Bezirksoberliga HannoverVI15th↓
2010–11Bezirksliga Hannover 2VII15th↓
2011–12Kreisliga HannoverVIII7th
2012–13Kreisliga HannoverVIII5th
2013–14Kreisliga HannoverVIII2nd↑
2014–15Bezirksliga Hannover 2VII6th
2015–16Bezirksliga Hannover 2VII16th↓
2016–17Kreisliga HannoverVIII

↑ Promoted↓ Relegated