Błyskawica Gać is a football club from the Lower Silesian village of Gać in Poland. The club has become well known amongst Polish football fans as a result of the club’s supporters regular display of their banner during Polish national team matches.[3]
History
The current iteration of the club was formed in 1997 as a merger between three local sides Foto-Higiena Oława, Błyskawica Gać and Korona Osiek.[4] The newly formed club inherited the legacy of Błyskawica Gać who were originally founded in 1946 and became affiliated with the Ludowe Zespoły Sportowe in the 1950s.[5]
After finishing top of the IV liga Silesia East and winning a promotion play-off in the 2017–18 season, the club gained promotion to the III liga.[6] Their opening game of the following season was against Ruch Chorzów which, up until that point, was the lowest league game the latter club had contested in their history.[7] During the COVID-19 pandemic, the club was accused of discrimination after having banned residents of the Silesian Voivodeship from attending matches at their home ground prior to a fixture against Ruch Chorzów.[8]
Club name
In 1995, the club’s president, a local entrepreneur named Tomasz Luda, applied to enter a team in the football league pyramid under the name Foto-Higiena Oława. The unusual club prefix, translatable as ‘Photo-Hygiene’, was a result of Luda’s ownership of a local photographic society, meetings of which were held in the premises of his brother’s hygiene supplies business in Oława. After the 1997 merger, the club retained the name Foto-Hygiena,[9] although in 2023, the club announced that they would drop their well known prefix, reverting to their original name of Błyskawica Gać.[10]
Rivalries
The club contest a local derby against Stal Brzeg from the nearby town of Brzeg.[11]
Supporters
Since the UEFA Euro 2016 supporters of the club have prominently displayed a Polish flag with the words Foto Higiena superimposed on it during matches played by the national team. The flag was also taken to games during the 2022 FIFA World Cup.[12]
In 2018, Maciej Zieliński took to Twitter to complain about the Foto-Higiena banner which he mistook for an advertisement after it had been displayed at a Poland basketball match.[13]