Still names like the Roar, Fury, Heart, really mean nothing at all – as time goes on you would hope that the place/region names would become the main focus.

The thing is with a franchise – Nth Queensland Fury can quite easily become Darwin Fury, or Hobart Fury if it fails in one area, and moves to another. Lets hope that doesn’t happen.

Red Devils, The Old Lady, The Toffees, The Villains, The Baggies, The Citizens, The Spurs, The Gunners, The Tigers, The Cottagers, and The Lactics

I seem to remember they had shortlisted the names and then they had some tv show where they decided on … “Power” … From memory Pirates was a name that made it close to the end and for mine (while very American) would have made much more sense being on the coast.

Stuttgart Kickers is a name that indicates the place (as most teams do) and the Kickers refers to a decision to ONLY play football whereas a lot of other clubs (across Europe) combine different sports within their organisation. Real Madrid with basketball is quite well-known, Unterhaching’s logo ( http://www.fussballwurst.de/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/spvggunterhaching.png ) will tell you the story of their club and so on.

The franchises just needed to get away from words such as Fury and Glory, it’s like American people naming their kids with the characteristics that they want them to have when they grow up, there is a whole generation of girls named “Hope”, “Charity”, “Honor” etc.

Sometimes marketing people have their place in sport, other times they just ruin it. The naming of A-League clubs certainly falls in the second category, I bet they listed of possible newspaper puns while coming up with the names and used it as part of their decision.

I do doubt though that in 100 years people will be talking about the latest expansion team with the likes of “why couldn’t they go for a traditional name like Fury”

Tink we need more Euro traditional football names, such as Sporting, Atletic etc…

Virtually any name is prone to sound contrived even if you are aiming for instant tradition like wanderers or rovers (what century are we in?).

The attachment and appreciation for the names will only come with time – more quickly with team success. I’ve heard many people comment that the Melbourne Heart should keep the name now as that’s what they have been referred to since they were vying for the license. And yet the name was ridiculed originally.

Roar was formally Brisbane Lions, before Fitzroy Lions became Brisbane, BTW. But the AFL successfully argued they were the bigger name team (before A-League) & you couldn’t have two ‘Brisbane Lions’. So Roar it became. Fair enough there, as far as having only one Brisbane Lions is concerned.

John O’Neill recently suggested the Melbourne S15 franchise find another name apart from Rebels, as historically, it gave the impression of being anti-establishment. Of course, the real reason appears to be O’Neill’s desire to wash away any trace of the previous ARC & administration before he returned.

Someone else suggested the reason why we have the ethereal type names – Heart, Glory, Victory, Fury, etc – is so we don’t offend anyone in a highly litigatious world. Frankly, it’s a cop-out as usual, but there you have it.

As for Socceroos, it will probably become an anachronism, not that it is really such a bad handle. The Socceroos have the opportunity to change to Footyroos, although i suspect some smarty has put a patent on it. I thought you couldn’t do that sort of thing anymore?

So there’s always Emus. Anyway, no major team sport is officially called the Emus, & it is our national bird. Like the Kangaroo, it can’t walk backwards (retreat) naturally. It is also an aggressive, pesty animal, & can “run the pants off a kangaroo-roo-roo”.

Good qualities for players in a national team to have! Won’t retreat, never surrenders, niggles their opponents, & outflanks them in the process!!!

As for the rest of the league, we have a decent mix of names. Some traditional, some not so much.