Mbale Heroes captain Geoffrey Lubangakene will continue with Mbale Heroes FC for at least another one year, The-SportsNation can reliably confirm.

The player has spent the past four seasons with the Surgeons, this will be his fifth as the club still targets Uganda Premier League (UPL) football.

He is the club’s longest serving player, having arrived in Mbale in 2019 to find the then newly acquired Kiboga Young in the FUFA Big League (FBL) under coach Richard Makumbi.

Four years after, so many things at the club have since drastically changed, coaches and players have left, but Lubangakene stayed to defend the Surgeons’ badge.

He was there and played in the FBL, faced relegation to the third division just a season after coming from the promotional playoffs and only narrowly failing to qualify to the UPL.

Lubangakene still stayed in Mbale to play two seasons in the regional league, the second in which he captained the team back to the second division, pushing the Surgeons closer to their top flight football dream.

No wonder he is the reigning best fans’ player of the season, as voted by the Mbale Heroes fans. He’s simply one of their favorites.

Besides the club voting him as best defender last season, he has also been declared best defender by the Eastern Regional Football Association (ERFA) for the two consecutive seasons Mbale Heroes have played in the regional league.

There’s a new coach at Mbale Heroes, but early signs are that newly appointed tactician Asaph Mwebaze will consider the defender as one of his first options at the back for the 2023/24 season as the club targets only UPL qualification.