Thirteen players and a manager stood huddled together in a dressing room, their heads lowered and faces expressionless, as had become the usual. They had suffered countless defeats this season, losing every single match they played, often conceding seven to eight goals a match in a long series of lopsided scorelines. This contest, however, the final one of the year, felt as if something much worse was about to transpire.
It had now reached half time at the iconic Lawson Tama Stadium, as a long and seemingly endless exercise in futility was at last only 45 minutes away from reaching its long-desired conclusion. Nestled in the capital city of the football-mad yet little known and perennially underfunded Oceanian country of Solomon Islands, the pitch had served as the official home of Solomon football for nearly six decades and had seen far better days of Real Kakamora football.
The club, founded in 1969, had dominated local competitions at will for most of their first decade of existence. Kakamora players composed half the national team’s starting eleven, and their unique style of play attracted the admiration of the entire country. But by 2011, the inaugural season of the Telekom S-League, the first true national football league in the history of the country, Kakamora were languishing in the third division. Their very participation in the competition happened entirely by luck. Makuru, one of the initial sides selected, had pulled out at the last second after their owner, a devout Seventh Day Adventist, refused to let his club play matches on a Saturday.
Kakamora were selected out of a pool of three local clubs to take their place, and had to sign players in order to form a complete squad from scratch so they could play in the league’s very first match—which was less than 24 hours away from kicking off.
The hastily-arranged Kakamora squad formed the next morning and predictably went on to struggle, losing their first match 2-0 and falling to win any the entire year. But the club gradually reinforced itself during mid-season transfer windows, and with the help of a player from Papua New Guinea side Hekari United that had just reached the Club World Cup, they began to stabilise themselves. By the end of the year, Kakamora had begun to produce some draws, and following the signing of a dynamic local attacking trio and a stronger management team, they miraculously placed 4th the very next season and did so again in 2014/15, shocking higher-ranked sides who expected to beat them with ease.
But in a country where funds are scarce, operating a club is expensive, and failing to secure a sponsorship could mean life or death for a team, Kakamora began to slowly regress again towards the bottom of the table for the rest of the decade as their funds began to dwindle. By 2018, they had not secured a main sponsor until three days prior to the start of the league, and by 2019/20, the club had completely run out of funds, effectively becoming bankrupt.
Selling or loaning all their top remaining players because they could no longer afford their wages, they were forced to create a squad of inexperienced local players, who predictably struggled immensely. Outmatched and outmanned in every regard, Kakamora suffered greatly and lost every single one of their 15 of their matches that season. By the end, seemingly everyone had checked out or given up on the club, and a side of amateurs lost their final match of the season to the eventual runners-up Henderson Eels in a league-record 19-0 thrashing. Star wonderkid Raphael Lea’i, only sixteen years of age at the time, hauled 11 of the Eels’ total goal tally himself that match.
Kakamora’s catastrophic death spiral fortunately had a lifeline in the form of local businessman and philanthropist Robert Chow, who volunteered to assume management of the team and infused it with much-needed funding. With many of their players and coaches back now that the club could afford their wages, Kakamora placed 8th out of 12 clubs in 2020/21 and rose all the way to 5th the following year. Led by star striker Jaygray Sipakana, it seemed as if the club had finally recovered financially and had saved themselves from the brink of collapse. It was the first time in six years that Kakamora had finished in the top half of the table. But this brief hint of a resurgence was completely dashed after Chow died tragically in 2022 while battling a mysterious illness. Overnight, the club now found themselves in exactly the same position they were in before his intervention: struggling to survive with poor finances.
Almost immediately, Sipakana departed Kakamora to Fijian side Nadi, while top winger Adrian Mara left the club after four seasons to play for Eels. They finished 11th in 22/23, and by 2023, Kakamora were again completely out of funding.
The squad formed for the 2023 season was arguably even worse than 2019/20’s, again being forced to rely on mainly inexperienced local players as they could not afford to pay the wages of high-quality footballers. In their first match of the season against newcomers SOSA, Kakamora surprisingly led at the break but could not hold onto their advantage in the second half, ultimately losing 4-2, before suffering two more close defeats to Waneagu United and Honiara City in subsequent fixtures. After managing to put together respectable performances despite the poor circumstances, that initial week would be arguably the closest they ever came that season to even gaining a point.
Any short-lived hope completely vanished following a 7-0 drubbing from Marist in the next fixture, and things quickly began to spiral even further. Gradually, dejected players began to quit on the team mid-season, disenchanted with the club’s performance and fears of unpaid wages. An already weak squad had now completely crumbled apart. Mid-week training sessions weren’t even held, and the morale of the remaining players became entirely decimated. The situation was so bad, in fact, that Kakamora even struggled to field a full starting eleven in a subsequent match against Waneagu, where they played the entire match with only nine men on the pitch! Adam Olofsson, who had come from Sweden to help introduce the sport of floorball to the country, ended up playing for Kakamora’s midfield in his free time as an unpaid volunteer replacement.
The defeats (and their size) began to pile up in unprecedented numbers. A 6-0 defeat to league leaders Solomon Warriors, a 7-2 loss to 11th-placed Juniper, 5-0 defeats to Central Coast and Honiara City, an 8-0 thrashing from Kossa, and a 7-0 loss to Southern United. The final two weeks of the season saw another set of 7-0 defeats to Central Coast and SOSA, who they had nearly beaten at the league’s start. Arguments were common in the club’s dressing room, more players had quit, and the rest of the league had grown up in arms over Kakamora’s egregiously bad performances, as they now sat bottom of the table with 21 losses and not a single win or draw to their name.
That brings us back to the final match of the season, on a dreary, cloudy, emotionless day at Lawson Tama Stadium, where Kakamora lined up against Warriors, who then were sitting in second place and would win the league if they took care of business and secured the full three points against the historically-inept Kakamora side. It was already 3-0 at halftime, where Kakamora’s centre back Allan Ofai was sent off late after a handball in the box. As if it had not been already before the match even started, Warriors were now effectively guaranteed to win the S-League for a record seventh time. But against only 10 men on the pitch for Kakamora, most of whom were young, inexperienced local replacement players for a team that was already made of inexperienced local players in the first place, Warriors smelt blood in the water, and would do whatever they could to make sure the final 45 minutes of Kakamora’s tragic season felt as long as they possibly could have.
By the start of the second half, the floodgates had now completely opened. Star attacker and Solomons international Tigi Molea, already sitting on a first-half brace and 22 goals on the season, desperately wanted to win another golden boot, and Warriors were determined to make sure he won it at all costs. By then, Kakamora’s players, who had given up on the season weeks and months ago, had somehow managed to look hundreds of times worse than they did the entire season. Defenders couldn’t string together more than 2 passes together and didn’t even bother to run back to mark their opponents once possession was intercepted. The goalkeeper played embarrassingly off his line. Warriors continued to get the ball to Molea, who took advantage of his free opportunities with ease as if he were scoring against a local youth team of amateurs. Considering Kakamora’s effort, he might as well have been. Warriors scored 11 times in the second half alone as Molea added another 8 goals to his tally, finishing with 30 on the season in 22 matches played, winning the golden boot as Warriors officially became champions yet again.
The backlash towards Kakamora (who had already been investigated for potential match-fixing following 2020’s infamous 19-0 defeat but were cleared of all wrongdoing after the league concluded they were just that bad) was swift and fierce. Opposing supporters, especially those of Central Coast and Waneagu United who finished tied for second in the table a point behind Warriors, called RKFC a disgrace to Solomon football and called for their immediate expulsion. They finished the season with only 14 goals scored and a whopping 116 goals conceded. Warriors matched Kakamora’s entire season total in a single game against them. The S-League, however, notably does not have a system of promotion/relegation with lower leagues and instead approves franchised clubs on a 3-season license agreement, meaning that the winless Kakamora would be allowed back in the league for 2024.
Following the constant embarrassments of the prior season, a longtime Kakamora supporter was not willing to go down quietly. Contacting the team ownership in February of 2024, he volunteered to start an Instagram account for the club in a last-ditch attempt to help highlight the club’s story before they would almost certainly collapse forever. In the developing Solomon Islands, use of platforms such as Instagram were somewhat minimal, with most social media users in the country opting to stick to Facebook. Only two other clubs in the country had even registered an account, both of which were now inactive for over half a decade.
With the club’s future hanging in the balance, the new admin attempted to attain virality by posting Reels and memes joking about the team’s shortcomings and embracing the label of the “worst club in the world.” After two weeks of slow initial growth, the account exploded in popularity, and by the end of April, had over 10,000 followers and millions of views, nearly unheard of for an Oceanian club, even those from New Zealand. Thousands began intrigued by the club’s unique story, large defeats, and even hoped to play for Kakamora themselves. Inspired by the rapid initial success, Kakamora’s management devised a plan to partner with second-division side Green Shield, whose owners would help manage the team and infuse funds into the side.
Over the course of a week, Kakamora signed a handful of promising youngsters from other clubs with youth international caps. The new management managed to convince Waneagu head coach Stephen Aumanu to come to the club, who brought over 18 year-old winger Paul Francis in addition to a talented young striker in Philip Ropa and goalkeeper Harold Nauania. Elsewhere, they signed 18 year-old centre back Gordon Iro from Central Coast’s youth side, and landed the services of veteran player and former international Jeffery Bule to help anchor the midfield and provide some experience and leadership to the new squad. The low-risk, high-upside signings continued for another few days, until management were able to completely replace every single player from last season’s team, forming an interesting mix of new players that would compose the youngest-average squad in the league.
Coincidentally, Kakamora’s first match of the season happened to come against Warriors, and now with a new team and significant online traction, the Instagram admin began to market the upcoming contest as a heated derby, humorously referring to Warriors as “VARriors” and calling on Kakamora’s new supporters to back the club in record numbers. With everyone unsure of what to expect from the new squad, Francis bagged a brace in his Kakamora debut as the side narrowly lost 3-2 to the very same club that had embarrassed them in their most recent fixture a season ago.
The next game, Kakamora picked apart Marist to win 4-0 and secure the club’s first victory in nearly two years. They embarked on an incredible run of form and went on to win five straight, finishing the first half of the season on top of the S-League table for the very first time as the Instagram only continued to grow. Kakamora had officially become the most popular Oceanian club not from New Zealand, and their exploits continued to captivate fans who were now fully invested in the team’s unprecedented comeback story. Francis became a cult hero, scoring stoppage-time winners and difficult free kicks to the delight of their new supporters.
Kakamora played Warriors again, drawing 0-0 and securing a point against them for the very first time since the league began in 2011. Francis’s fame, Iro’s success in the back line, and the admin’s shitposting successes intensified even further, with the team now improbably having their sights set on qualifying for Champions League football. Unfortunately, after a heated title race, Kakamora ran out of gas as Central Coast and Warriors (who had multiple matches in hand) gradually overtook them as the season came to a close. Despite that, Kakamora secured their first ever third-place finish and a league-record 7-0 victory over SOSA. The greatly-improved backline and Nauania’s success at the keeper position helped Kakamora lead the league in clean sheets a season after they had conceded 116 goals. Francis, Iro, and Nauania all earned call-ups to the Solomon Islands national team at the end of the season and would go on play for them at the World Cup Qualifiers, although they controversially received little playing time as Solo were bounced out of the group stages.
By the end of the season, Kakamora reached 30,000 followers, temporarily overtaking perennial OCL winners Auckland City as the most followed club on Instagram from the confederation, with the exception of the A-League’s NZ expatriate members Auckland FC and Wellington Phoenix. For a region so largely overlooked by most global football fans, Kakamora had become Oceania’s first global success story and helped bring Solomon and Oceania football closer to the mainstream for the first time. The S-League received record viewership figures on FIFA+ as Kakamora pursued their title chase, and the admin continued to vigorously push to help grow Oceanian football online, often working for 20 hours a day to help promote the club.
As Kakamora had their sights set on winning the league for the very first time in 2025, disaster struck. After a lack of communication, Green Shield and Kakamora applied for their new league licenses independently from one another, and the league’s board somehow controversially denied Kakamora their renewed license at the start of the season. They were the only former club denied participation, sparking rumours of corruption amongst members of the board. Refusing to contact the club directly and vaguely citing “non-compliance with league requirements” as the only reason for their expulsion, Kakamora’s new supporters were now up in arms. The club was now banned indefinitely from playing football in their own league after a year in which they had dramatically boosted its global popularity to levels never thought possible. The team attempted to appeal but received no response from the board, who merely said that “the decision was final.” The 2025 S-League season, which also saw Warriors and Eels drop out due to struggles with obtaining proper sponsors and funding, was the least viewed of the decade as Central Coast went on to win a second successive championship.
Despite the ban, Real Kakamora, who are also responsible for running the Makira-Ulawa provincial football team of the same name for the Solomon Cup tournament, managed to secure their first ever win of the competition, finishing unbeaten in the group stages and triumphing 3-0 in the final in front of a passionate crowd of over 10,000 at the new Solomon Islands National Stadium, further strengthening calls to let Kakamora back in the league.
The club’s Instagram account continued its unconventional posts and attention-grabbing tactics by continuing to promote the club and commenting on larger football pages in order to maintain relevance, sparking a controversy with popular “journalist” Fabrizio Romano, who went to block the club on the platform after they called out his “excessive engagement farming” regarding the death of Liverpool star Diogo Jota, and paid PR-style posts to promote and defend certain players, including Lamine Yamal and Marseille’s Mason Greenwood. They partnered with more clubs within their continent, establishing relations with sides in the A-League, Australia’s NPL and New Zealand’s National Leagues, in addition to recently-founded OFC Pro League clubs South Island United and Tahiti United. They’ve also been responsible for helping promote the country’s own team, Solomon Kings, and have interacted with German giants Borussia Dortmund.
However, as Kakamora once again re-launched a push to have the club admitted back into the league for the 2026 season, the board confirmed that Kakamora would be expelled until at least the 2028 season as they refused to let any club enter the league until the current franchise licenses expire. Despite their tremendous successes, Kakamora are now faced in a difficult position, as it seems unlikely that the club will be able to enter the lower divisions of Solomon football in an attempted comeback and will face significant difficulties in maintaining interest of online supporters as the club faces another two seasons without top-flight football. Without any competitions to play in or stream of income, the club may have to cease operations before they could even return. For such an incredible story that helped shine a light on Oceanian football to a global audience for the very first time, it’s difficult to come to terms with it potentially ending like this: a football club deprived of the ability to play due to circumstances they couldn’t control, desperately doing whatever they can as their chances of survival fade further and further by the day.
Oceania Football Center 