Ebusua Dwarfs

Ebusua Dwarfs go into this season back in Ghana's second tier after finishing bottom of a three-team playoff in August 2022 that decided who would replace the relegated Ashanti Gold — a defeat to Liberty Professionals and a draw with Tamale City left them short, and Tamale went up instead. It has been that kind of decade for a club that once had a claim to be among Ghana's leading sides.

The proof of that stands in three trophies, one each. The Ghana Premier League title came in 1965–66, the FA Cup followed in 1968 with a 4–2 win over Ho Mighty Eagles, and in 1970 Ebusua Dwarfs became the first winners of the Presidential Cup. Two FA Cup finals since then have gone the other way, on penalties against Goldfields in 1993 and by a single goal to Hearts of Oak the year after.

Cape Coast knows the club by more than one name. "The Mysterious Dwarfs" is the formal version; locally they are also "The Crabs," after an old belief around the town that height brings bad luck. Charles Kumi Gyamfi passed through as a midfielder in the late 1940s before he went on to build a coaching career that reshaped Ghanaian football, and Richard Ackon carried the club's name to the 1998 Africa Cup of Nations. More recently Dennis Nkrumah-Korsah captained the side before winning his first caps for Ghana in 2022.

Matches against Venomous Vipers, the other club in town, are still called the Oguaa derby, named for the old term for Cape Coast itself. Nana Sam Brew-Butler, once chairman of the Ghana Football Association, now runs the club he supports from the presidency. The Cape Coast Sports Stadium, where the Dwarfs have played since well before any of this, holds 15,000.