Calvary spreading the gospel in big league with eyes on promotion
Calvary was started in the mid-2000s as a platform to spread the Christianity gospel to the sports-loving youths in Arua City
What you need to know:
- The team survived relegation by a whisker collecting 19 points, two above the red mark. Their chief executive officer David Adebo blames the poor debut performance to disorganisation that came with Covid.
- Professional football has its own demands but Adebo believes the church-founded community club can conform to the standards even without diverging from their core values and initial objectives.
Calvary was started in the mid-2000s as a platform to spread the Christianity gospel to the sports-loving youths in Arua City.
Along the way, the club sponsored by a church organisation –Calvary Ministries International- enrolled into the football structures and scaled the heights from the fifth division to the Fufa Big League last season.
The team survived relegation by a whisker collecting 19 points, two above the red mark. Their chief executive officer David Adebo blames the poor debut performance to disorganisation that came with Covid.
“We qualified at a bad time when Covid-19 hit the world,” Adebo told Sunday Monitor.
“It was challenging as we couldn’t beef our squad because the window for transfer was almost closed. We lacked experience both on the bench and playing staff.”
Adebo says that his team has been spurred by neighbours Onduparaka who they share the Greenlight stadium with and the rapid rise of Arua Hills to the topflight and want to emulate that in their quest for promotion.
“We want to follow in Arua Hill and Onduparaka’s footsteps and possibly join them [in the Uganda Premier League]. We’ve picked good lessons from them; the first is that the league needs good preparations and some experience in both coaching and playing staff.”
The team has acquired the services of former Gulu United and Acholi Province tactician Geoffrey Akena as head coach, John Ong’odia from Blacks Power as his assistant and Charles Ogweny as goalkeeping coach.
They’ve brought in experienced legs of Vitalis Tabu (from Bul), Rogers Atube and Joseph Owiny both from Ndejje University, Dickens Kilama and Julius Cheka from Paidha Black Angels to boost their playing unit.
Core values
Professional football has its own demands but Adebo believes the church-founded community club can conform to the standards even without diverging from their core values and initial objectives.
“The church runs the club but it belongs to the community. We want to go professional and conform to the standards demanded by a professional football setting but we shall not deviate away from our core values.”
They host Blacks Power today at the Greenlight Stadium as they search for their first win of the season.
