Tampereen Palloilijat

Tampereen Palloilijat was founded in July of 1921 by eleven youngsters interested in football.^[1] In 1924 the members of the club built the first grass pitch of inner Finland in the Kaleva district of Tampere. In the opening match of the pitch Tampereen Palloilijat won HIFK 3–2.^[2] In January of 1928 Tampereen Palloilijat made history after playing the first ever official ice hockey match in the history of Finland and in 1931 the club won its first championship in ice hockey after beating HJK. Doing so, the club also became the first one to bring the ice hockey championship to Tampere.

TaPa was promoted to the Mestaruussarja, the top tier of Finnish football in 1960. In the 1961 season of the Mestaruussarja the club made the new attendance record of the Tampere Stadium after attracting 8000 people to the stands of the stadium in a game against local rivals FC Haka.^[3] In the 1962 season the club achieved third place in the Mestaruussarja. In 1968 the club merged together with Tampellan Pallo after hitting financial difficulties creating the club Tampellan Palloilijat which played in the Mestaruussarja for one season in 1971. Soon after in 1974 Tampellan Palloilijat and Ilves-Kissat merged together into Ilves which made a comeback to the Finnish football scene after having no football department for almost three decades.^[4] After the merger into Ilves Tampereen Palloilijat re-established its junior department in 1980 but after the merger TaPa have no longer played in the upper tiers of Finnish football.

TaPa played in the first SM-sarja season. TaPa played a total of 4 seasons in the SM-sarja (1928, 1929, 1931 and 1932).

The best result for TaPa was the winning of SM-sarja in 1931