PWD

Mankon Municipal Stadium holds about 5,000 people, and PWD Bamenda has played there through spells in the top flight and years away from it. The stadium sits in Bamenda's Mankon district, in Cameroon's Northwest Region, and it has watched the club go from newcomer to founder-era survivor: PWD was formed in 1962, among the oldest football clubs still active in the country.

Supporters call the team the Abakwa Boys. The name has carried through decades in which the club's fortunes swung sharply — a first Cameroon Cup final in 1967, lost to Canon Yaoundé, then a second in 1979, lost to Dynamo Douala. Relegation from Elite One followed the 2005 season, and PWD spent more than a decade in regional football before working its way back: Elite 2 in 2016, the top division again in 2018.

The return paid off faster than the wait suggested it might. The 2019/2020 season ended without a finish, halted by the COVID-19 pandemic, but the table stood in PWD's favour and the club took its first Elite One title. A year later it went to the Ahmadou Ahidjo Stadium in Yaoundé for a third attempt at the Cameroon Cup, having lost the previous two, and beat Les Astres de Douala 1-0.

The goal that finally won the club its cup came in the 15th minute, from Hubert Mbunwe Chem, closing a chase that had run since 1967. Months earlier, in April 2019, the club had gone through a different kind of ordeal: head coach Augustine Choupo was kidnapped and released unharmed, an episode that passed into the club's history alongside its trophies rather than instead of them.