Roan United

Roan United's supporters measure the club less by league position than by what leaves Luanshya every few years: a player. The Copperbelt side has long been treated as Zambia's academy for the position, with a striking share of the national team's number ones passing through its ranks. Emmanuel "Mannix" Mwape stands at the head of that line, the goalkeeper voted the best on the continent in 1974; his brothers Kenny and Aaron also played for the club, giving the Mwape name a particular weight in Luanshya.

The club itself came together in February 1962, when Roan Mine African FC and Roan Antelope Callies FC merged into a single side wearing white and black stripes, and the nickname "Stylish" followed from the way that side played rather than from anything written into its badge. Within that same year it took the first Northern Rhodesia National Football League title and the first of what became four Zambian Cup wins, a habit it repeated in 1977, 1994 and 1996 and matched with four Zambian Challenge Cup victories besides.

Nkana FC, based nearby and known as the Red Devils, has long been the rival that matters most on this stretch of the Copperbelt, though the fixture has never carried a settled name of its own the way some derbies do.

What sits less comfortably alongside that early haul of trophies is the gap since. The club's most recent honour on record is a Second Division title in 2006 that returned it to the top flight, and no major cup or league crown from the decades either side of that promotion has followed it.