By Chidi Odinkalu
“It was as if the football club wanted to regain through football what the Igbo ‘lost’ during the war.” – Segun Odegbami, MON
Nearly every Nigerian who was alive then remembers where they were at the end of 1976 when Alyufusalam Rocks met Enugu Rangers International in the finals of what was then known as the Challenge (Football Association) Cup. With a history going back to the Governor’s Cup, the first finals of which took place on 7 November, 1945, the Challenge Cup was the premier knock-out competition in Nigerian football. Although strictly inferior to the football league, the win-or-go-home traditions of the Challenge Cup captured public imagination in a way that the league did not.
