Maroons

In 1970 a club drawn from prison warders in Kampala became the first Ugandan side to enter the African Cup of Champions Clubs, and reached the quarter-finals on the first attempt. Maroons FC, raised by the Uganda Prisons Service in 1965 and still carrying the name Mbili Mbili as a nickname, had already taken the first two editions of the Ugandan Super League, in 1968 and 1969, before that continental run.

The club is better known locally as Prisons FC, and its ground explains why: Luzira Prisons Stadium sits inside the Luzira Maximum Security Prison complex.

Success did not hold. Maroons dropped out of the top flight and stayed out for 23 years, a stretch ended only in 2007 when they won the Kampala Zonal Mini League and earned promotion back. Since then the club has settled into a pattern familiar to sides its size: relegation in 2016 and again in 2020, and promotion answering each drop within a year or two, most recently in 2022. Three FUFA Big League titles, in 2010, 2015 and 2017, mark the club's second-tier form during those years.

Alongside Police FC and Simba FC, later UPDF FC, Maroons belongs to Uganda's group of institutional clubs, sides raised from state services rather than towns or businesses, and old rivalries with both persist without a fixed derby fixture attached to them. The current task is the one the club has faced after each of its recent relegations: hold a place among Uganda's top sides for longer than the last spell allowed.