KAKAMEGA HOMEBOYZ

Meet the brilliantly-named Kenyan football club whose badge has two corn cobs either side of a football balancing on a pointy rock. Obviously

When the businessman Cleophas ‘Toto’ Shimanyula decided to set up a new club in western Kenya back in 2010, he pondered over a name and came to the only sensible conclusion: what the world was missing was a team called Kakamega Homeboyz.

The Homeboyz are based in Kakamega just a few miles from both Lake Victoria and the Equator, and their club badge is a thing of wonder: two corn cobs framing a rock with a football precariously balanced on it. That rock is actually called the Crying Stone of Ilesi, which is a local tourist attraction, rather than something from an episode of Father Ted.

Kakamega share the Bukhungu Stadium with West Kenya Sugar and have enjoyed an eventful existence so far. They progressed to the Kenyan Premier League within three years, although Shimanyula then had to appeal for more sponsors so he could afford all of the win bonuses for the players, who he’d also employed in day jobs at his various businesses.

The club are in the top division again now but only after a strange period in which they were relegated, and then denied promotion in 2014 because a points deduction meant they finished behind Zoo Kericho and Shabana. So controversial was the punishment that the Football Kenya Federation chose to promote three teams, only for the Kenyan Premier League to scrap all promotions in what several online sources delicately describe as ‘a misunderstanding’. No doubt the Homeboyz had a right cob on.