Hrvatski nogometni klub Segesta Sisak (English: Croatian Football Club Segesta Sisak), commonly referred to as HNK Segesta Sisak or simply Segesta Sisak is a Croatian professional football club located in the city of Sisak. It is named after the Illyrian settlement Segestika from which the modern town of Sisak developed. Founded in 1906, The Old Lady is the oldest Croatian club that still exists under its original name.
FŠK Segesta Sisak was founded around the end of June 1906, spending most of the Interwar period in the lower divisions of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. With the arrival of the communist regime in 1945, the club changed its name several times, settling on SD Naprijed Sisak in 1946. However, in the middle of the 1952 season they changed it back to NK Segesta Sisak. Throughout the Cold War Segesta competed in the third Yugoslav division, with short stints in the Second Federal League.
After the Republic of Croatia achieved its independence in 1991, Segesta played five consecutive seasons in the top division and even made it to the final of the 1996 UEFA Intertoto Cup. In the 1996/97 First Croatian League season they finished 11th and after losing in the playoffs they were relegated to the Second Croatian League, never again returning to the Croatian top flight. Today they compete in the Third Croatian League, the 4th division of Croatian football.
History
Origins (1906-1918) The most important information about the club and people who founded can be found 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 ground was also inaugurated. The event was covered by the local weekly magazine "Hrvatske novine" and some of the original founders were interviewed. The story goes that the club was created in late June or early July of 1906 by a group of school students: 13 year old Ivo Stipčić and about twenty of his friends gathered at Ivo's uncle Ivan Šešek's inn (today's Ivana Kukuljevića-Sakcinskog Street, number 4), and decided to found a football club. The founders agreed that the first president of the club would be the owner of the ball, 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 — Segestika. Since the members of the club were mostly pupils and students who stayed in Sisak only during the summer school holidays, it was named Ferijalni športski klub Segesta Sisak (Holiday Sports Club "Segesta" Sisak).
The first written trace of "Segesta" can be found in the weekly "Novi Sisački Glas" from the 15th of August 1909, when Segesta played a match against Concordia Zagreb. In a 1912 edition of the weekly magazine "Sisak" 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 mentions Segesta in 1919 as "the first Sisak-based club, the Holiday Sports Club Segesta". Thus the precise and real founding date is not sure, due to a lack of any documentation about the happening.
Interwar period and WWII (1918-1945) The name Holiday Sports Club Segesta Sisak hung around until 1920, when at the annual club meeting on the 1st of August it was decided that the club will register in the Yugoslav football association as Športski klub Segesta Sisak (Sports Club Segesta Sisak). That decision was finalised on the 14th February 1921 and since then Segesta participated in every season of the Yugoslav Football Championship until 1941, and the Croatian Football League until 1944.
The club's first success came in their inaugural season in the YFA. They placed first in Sisak's local league, but lost to ŠK Krajišnik Banja Luka in the quarter-finals of the provincial playoffs. On the 1st of March 1925 the club changed its name for the second time to Građanski športski klub Segesta Sisak (Citizens' Sports Club Segesta Sisak) to gather the following of the citizens of Sisak. They reached the quarter-finals again in the 1926/27 season, but lost to ŠK Proleter Slavonski Brod.