East End Lions

The National Stadium in Freetown holds 45,000, though the ground has been through enough rehabilitation work over the years that other counts put the figure lower or higher depending on when they were taken. East End Lions have called it home since well before most of its current stands went up, sharing it, as every major Freetown club does, on a rotating fixture list rather than owning it outright.

The club dates to 1928, which puts it among the handful of Sierra Leonean sides whose history predates the league itself. Locally the shirt is enough to identify them: red with black sleeves, the colours behind the nickname "The Killers." Thirteen Premier League titles follow from that history, stretched from 1980 to the most recent, in 2024/25, with four FA Cups added along the way, the last of them in 2014 after extra time against Kamboi Eagles.

None of that explains Freetown on derby day better than the fixture against Mighty Blackpool. Called simply the Freetown derby, it is the oldest rivalry in the national game, and it carries more weight in the city than any single season's table does. FC Kallon supply a second, more local needle as cross-town rivals.

Kemson Fofanah has worn the shirt as a right-back capped internationally, and Prince Barrie carried it to the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations. But East End Lions measure their history against Leslie Allen, whose name went into the club's Hall of Fame in 2002 and who remains the reference point against which every forward since has been judged.