Rosenborg Ballklub is a football club from Trondheim, Norway. It was established in 1917 as Odd by 12 boys, and played local friendlies, became it was not permitted to join the Football Association of Norway (NFF). After permission was granted, it took the current name and joined the league system in 1928. Until 1937, Rosenborg played in the regional league, both in the A and B division, after numerous promotions and relegations. Since 1932, the team has played in the Norwegian Football Cup. It jointed the inaugural League of Norway in 1937, but the break-out of the Second World War in 1940 caused a halt to all organized sports.
In 1945, Rosenborg won the ad hoc regional league and play-offs, becoming district champions. It failed in the following season's qualification, and spent the following years up and down between the Third and Second Divisions. In 1958–59, it won the Third Division, and the following season won the Second Division, allowing Rosenborg to play in the Main League. Rosenborg took its first cup trophy in 1960, but in the important 1961–62 season failed to qualify for the new First Division the following season. The club spent four seasons in the Second Division, after which it has played at the top level except in the 1978 season. Rosenborg won the cup again in 1964, allowing it to play in the Cup Winners' Cup the following season. The league was won in 1967, 1969 and 1971—the latter also resulting in the double.
The next league trophy was won in 1985, and then in 1988 and 1990. From 1992 through 2004, Rosenborg took 13 consecutive league trophies, and has since also won three more. The club had limited success in the UEFA tournaments, never coming past the first round, until reaching the group stage of Champions League in 1995, which was subsequently reached eight consecutive times, and eleven times in total. The success during the 1990s has largely been credited to manager Nils Arne Eggen. After his 2002 retirement, the club went through eight managers, with the stable success falling.
Odd The club was founded by a group of twelve boys aged about 17 from the Rosenborg neighborhood on 19 May 1917. It was named Odd, after the club with the same name in Skien, which at the time was Norway's most successful team. The membership fee was set to 0.25 Norwegian krone (NOK) per week—the same price as a cinema ticket—which would allow them have sufficient funds to buy a kit set within a year. The team did some practices in the Solhaug area during the summer, but could not find any other teams to schedule matches against.
On 19 May 1918, treasurer Karl Skagen presented a complete kit for all twelve members. The top was blue with yellow detailing, while the shorts were white. The team's first match was held in mid-July against Falk, which Odd won 2–1. During the season, the club had problems with getting sufficient players to meet to the matches, particularly because of shift work. Until then, it was only the founders which had been members, but from 1919 new players were recruited. From that year, the club also started organizing dance parties.
Odd was like many of the other clubs in Trondheim not a member of NFF. Instead they played unofficial tournaments and matches against other private clubs in the area. During the early 1920s, the number of clubs joining NFF increased rapidly, and by 1923 Odd only played a single match during the entire season. In 1924, the annual meeting decided to start working with joining NFF through Trondheim Football District, although not without disagreement. This issue, along with a number of younger people joining the club, resulted in a generation change.
Trygve Falstad and Richard Olsen became the team's most important players, and at the same time started negotiating the right to join NFF. At that time, the football district did not want to accept additional clubs, stating that there were insufficient fields to play on, and that people wanting to play football were free to join existing clubs in the city. Olsen took over as club president in 1926 and sent an application to join the football district in July. It was passed by the district's board with a single decisive vote. Because of NFF's rules that no two clubs could have the same name, Odd changed its name to Rosenborg Ballklub.
Pre-war years Although being accepted in 1926, Rosenborg had a one-year quarantine before they were allowed to play in the regional league and first played in the league from the 1928 season. At the time, the district had leagues in two tiers, A and B, which played a single round robin tournament each summer season. Both in 1928 and 1929, Rosenborg won the league—the latter with six of six possible victories, but both times failed the promotion play-off, first against National and then against Rapp, both after extra time. In 1931, Rosenborg was successful, won all league games and beat National in the playoffs. The same year, the important player Øivind Skagen died of tuberculosis. The 1932 season was a failure; the team had no coach, and could go months without any training. The team lost three of four games, including 9–2 against Freidig. From that summer, the team introduced two trainings per week, but it was not sufficient to avoid relegation. The season also saw the club debut in the Norwegian Football Cup.
In January 1933, the club's star player Sigurd "Sikken" Fossum announced that he would transfer to SK Brage in the top league, the first incident of better clubs "fishing" a player in Central Norway. He criticized Rosenborg for not having sufficiently organized trainings, and in part because of this the trainings became more structured. The team succeeded at winning the 1934 B league and were again promoted to the A league after beating Rapp in a promotion play-off. But a revenge match against "Sikken" was not possible after he was killed in a work accident. At the end of the year, three more players left the club for Trondheims-Ørn, this time of political reasons. Rosenborg was located in a labor neighborhood, but had chosen to join NFF instead of the Workers' Federation of Sports (AIF). With the rising class awareness of the mid-1930s, socialist politicians and unionists encouraged people to take sides by instead joining worker sports clubs. Odd had considered joining AIF in the late 1920s, but mostly because of NFF's restrictive admittance policy. Nearly all members of the club were working-class, but the club's board stated that it was unnecessary to create politics out of sports.
In 1934, Rosenborg retained their place in the A league, placing fourth. In January 1935, the club established an ice hockey team. The goal was initially to establish a good training possibility for the players during the winter, when the city's football grounds were covered by ice and snow. The initiative was taken by Harald Petersen, Olav Fossum and Trygve Falstad, who were worried that the football team would again lose matches because they were outrun by the opponents. At first the training was done on a frozen lake at Lian, Liavannet. The following two seasons, Rosenborg were runners-up in the A league. In 1937, a lighting system was installed on the field at Solhaug, which allowed the pitch to be iced and training done on the field.
The 1937 season saw Rosenborg finish fifth in the A league, although for the first time advanced past the second round of the cup, reaching the round of 16, where they were beat 0–5 by Fredrikstad. From the 1937–38 season, the League of Norway was created, a national top league with 11 conferences with a play-off at the end of the season to establish a national champion. In the inaugural season, Rosenborg took part in a twelve-match, seven team league, ending sixth. The following season, Rosenborg won its conference and beat Kristiansund in the play-off quarter-final. In the semi-final, Skeid was held 0–0 until two minutes before the end of regular time, when Skeid scored the winning goal.
The 1939–40 season was canceled after the winter break because of the German invasion of Norway. Half-hearted attempts were made to keep sports running during the war, but by November 1940, the sports federations went on strike, ending all play for the duration of the occupation. Players from Rosenborg and other teams would secretly meet on remote fields in the evening and weekends and play unorganized matches, often with mixed teams. The teams were named Niffs and Fiffico, and results were announced on public places through cryptic poems not understandable by German soldiers. When people discussed players, names were never used, and instead they would be referred to by the teams they had played for. Rosenborg held training at local pitches, and would sometimes take day or week trips around Trøndelag to play friendly matches, often without or with fake travel permits. Throughout the Second World War, Rosenborgbanen was used by German soldiers who were stationed at Kristiansten Fortress.
Promotions and relegations
The first post-war game took place away against Buvik IL on 3 June 1945, first with the B-team losing 5–1 and then with the A-team winning 1–2. Sports clubs from Östersund in Sweden sent packages with shoes and kits to Rosenborg, resulting in Rosenborg's A-team playing in green kits and the other teams in white and red. The shoes were distributed to promising youth players, instead of the establish A-team players, to some of the older members' irritation. The 1945 season saw both a training tournament be played in Östersund, as well as Rosenborg win the A league and win the district championship after beating Falken 1–0—the team's first-ever title. Rosenborg also established a women's division, after initiative from 12 women, which entered the handball league. A handball team for men was established the following season, which won the district championships in its inaugural season.
The 1946–47 season saw the establishment of regional qualification leagues to determine which teams would qualify for the League of Norway. Rosenborg finished seventh in the league, and played the following year in the Third Division. In 1948, Harald Petersen resigned as president, after having held the position on and off since 1923, after NFF had excluded him after a professional boxer he had been manager for had played a match during the sports strike in 1941. However, he remained the team's head coach until 1954. The 1947–48 season saw Rosenborg win the conference league, but lose the promotion play-off. The following season, they again won the league, and this time succeeded at the promotion, allowing them to play in the Regional League in the 1949–50 season. Petersen used his Olympic silver-winning boxing client Henry Tiller and Hjalmar Andersen, later Olympic gold medalist in speed skating, to introduce new training methods in the club, which focused more on basic training, such as long-distance running and sit-ups. In the following three seasons, Rosenborg remained in the Regional League, finishing third in 1950–51, but finishing eight and last in the following season and being relegated back to Third Division. The team stayed two seasons there, finishing second in 1952–53, and winning the 1953–54 season, after Asbjørn Jøssund had taken over as manager and head coach.