By Amaechi Agbo
The Department of Mass Communication on Friday emerged champions of the 2026 Enugu State University of Science and Technology, (ESUT) Freshers League.
The league which was contested by 100 level students in each department in the university, saw the communicators emerge champions after winning Computer Science Department 4-3 on penalties. The regulation had ended 1-1
Computer Science had every reason to think the game was won by half-time. They hadn’t scored, but they’d done everything else — eight shots to Mass Comm’s one, three on target, corners stacking up in their favour, and a Mass Comm goalkeeper who barely touched the ball but somehow looked like the busiest man on the pitch.
Computer Science (CSC) pressed, probed, and camped in front of goal for most of the first forty-five minutes. Every buildup looked the same: patient spells of possession in midfield, a ball worked wide, a cross or cutback into the box, and then nothing to finish it off. They just couldn’t find the goal their play deserved.
For a spell it looked like the kind of first half that gets replayed in a coach’s head long after the final whistle — all the right ingredients, none of them paid off. Mass Comm, by contrast, spent most of the opening forty-five defending in numbers, happy to sit deep, break up play, and let the opponents have the ball in areas that didn’t hurt them. It wasn’t pretty, but it was working. They went in at the break down on the stat sheet — one shot on target to CSC’s eight — but level on the scoreboard, which in a cup final is the only column that counts.
Whatever was said at half-time, it showed almost immediately. Mass Comm came out for the second half a different side — higher up the pitch, more willing to commit bodies forward, no longer content to just soak up pressure. Computer Science’s breakthrough, when it came, felt like a fair reward for the balance of play: Jiggy finished off a passage of pressure that had been building since kickoff and sent the CSC bench into celebration. It was the goal the first half had promised.
It didn’t last. Mass Comm’s response was almost instant — Salah got in behind and levelled the score before CSC could settle back into their rhythm, and from that point the game changed shape entirely. What had been a one-sided territorial battle turned into an open contest, end to end, both sides now trading chances instead of one side manufacturing them.
The shot count by full-time told the story of that shift: 13 for Computer Science, 12 for Mass Comm — a gap of one, compared to the seven-shot gulf at the break. And in the column that actually decides games, shots on target, Mass Comm had nosed ahead, 7 to 6.
Neither side eased off after the goals went in — if anything, the game got more combative. Fouls piled up on both ends, CSC finishing with eleven to Mass Comm’s five, a fair reflection of how much harder the game had to be fought once it turned into a genuine contest. Both goalkeepers earned their keep late on too, combining for eleven saves between them, denying good chances at both ends as the clock ran down. Nobody wanted to be the side that blinked, and for ninety minutes, nobody did.
With the scores still level after normal time, the final went to penalties — the cruellest way to decide a game, and the fairest test of nerve. Mass Comm held theirs better. They converted when it mattered, and when CSC’s fourth attempt didn’t find the net, the shootout — and the tournament — belonged to Mass Comm, 4-3.
It’s a hard way for CSC to lose a final they controlled for long stretches, especially after a first-half showing that should have put the game out of reach and Jiggy’s opener that looked, for a few minutes, like the moment that would define the match. But cup finals rarely reward the team that dominates for forty-five minutes; they reward whoever adjusts and holds their nerve for all ninety, plus whatever comes after. Mass Comm changed their approach at the break, rode Salah’s equalizer to level terms, and finished the job from the spot when it mattered most.
