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I remember back to 2008 when the second Melbourne A-League team bid released its tentative name. The words ‘Melbourne Heart’ were cringeworthy; they sounded silly and contrived.
But the A-League was already full of cringeworthy names: The Roar, The Fury, and worst of all The Glory.
What do all these monikers have in common? They are all singular and abstract. A moniker has to be a plurality of tangible, concrete somethings to work (or so I thought). Why couldn’t they have called themselves Melbourne Hearts like the Scottish team at least!?!
These embarrassing names are by no means unique to the A-League in Australian Sport: ‘Come on the Power!’ is as silly as it sounds,
The Western Force is again very awkward to cheer for, the now defunct NBL franchise Sydney Spirit is perhaps the corniest of all, and just what was Cricket Australia thinking when they established the BBL: The Heat, The Thunder?
I much prefer Rabbitohs, Wanderers, Swanies, Redbacks and ‘Tahs. Plurals and concreteness is far less awkward.
So does a sporting team require a pluralised, tangible moniker to be a success? Is the singular vague entity doomed to embarrassing failure like my parochial sporting view suggested? Absolutely not.
To begin with, of my four examples of good nicknames from Australian sport, whilst all are pluralized, only two are really tangible: the Swans and the Redbacks.
Of the rest, one is the cry that was heard from Rabbit sellers in Sydney during the Great Depression (Rabbitoh!), one is an abbreviation of a flower (The Waratah, NSWs floral emblem) and one pays homage to Australia’s first Association Football Club (from Parramata!) which in turn derived its name as a homage to the famous London Club, Wanderers FC who had multiple temporary home grounds in its early years had to “wander” constantly to play games.
American sports and English football illustrate very well that an animal is not needed, abstract monikers work fine. Think Gunners, Toffees, Spurs and Hammers; Patriots, Packers, Yankees, and Knicks.
An animal is not necessary (or a bird, I’m looking at you AFL), intangible monikers work fine.
As for pluralisation, there are plenty of examples of nicknames that aren’t plural that work brilliantly. The plural is actually one interesting cultural difference between Sydney and Melbourne.
Sydneysiders pluralise compass points in team names, but curiously Melbournians have the cultural idiosyncrasy of using the singular form for their teams.
Whilst NSWRL fans cheered for Norths (North Sydney Bears), Wests (Western Suburbs Magpies) and Souths (South Sydney Rabbitohs), VFL fans were cheering on North (North Melbourne Kangaroos) and South (South Melbourne Swans).
Today, only two of those clubs from both leagues remain in their original form. However; Sydneysiders are still staunchly dedicated to pluralisation so much so that the merger between Western Suburbs and Balmain Tigers led to the rather jarring ‘Wests Tigers’, which is very difficult to get one’s tongue around.
Melbournians are equally committed to their quirk of singularization of compass points for their teams. Kangaroos fans continued to stubbornly refer to their club as ‘North’ after the club officially changed to The Kangaroos in a futile effort to appeal to a national audience as they sold home games around Australia, they have since, however reverted back to North Melbourne.
North and South both have unofficial nicknames in addition to the official monikers of Kangaroos and Swans, and both have interesting histories.
North are known as the Shinboners due to the clubs abattoir worker origins and South are known as the Bloods for many reasons. Originally it was a reference to the red sash (and subsequent V) on their white jumpers.
As a result they adopted the epithet the “Bloodstained Angels”. In the 1945 ‘Blood Bath Grand Final’ against Carlton, the name proved prophetic as South Melbourne’s white jumpers really were blood stained in the most vicious grand final in VFL/AFL history; 10 players were suspended (Carlton won by 25 points). But I digress.
Singularised monikers can work.
From the Premier League there’s Tottenham Hotspur. Where the name Hotspur came from is a bit of a mystery, although its possibly a reference to Shakespeare’s Harry Hotspur from Henry IV whose descendants supposedly lived near the club.
In any case its a great name. Then there is their heated North London Rivals who are known not by a town, city, state or suburb, but by the name Arsenal. They were previously The Woolwich Arsenal, founded by workers of an armament factory, but the Woolwich part was dropped early on when they moved into North London and they became The Arsenal.
Interestingly the ‘The’ that preceded Arsenal was dropped by famous Gunners Manager Herbert Chapman in the Thirties so that Arsenal would be first team on alphabetical lists. (Anyone who has ever played FIFA will know how great the fruits of that idea were.)
But fans, pundits and commentators will still occasionally refer to ‘The Arsenal’ and that’s because it works as a singular entity so much so that it has been adopted by clubs around the world: Braga Arsenal from Portugal and Arsenal de Sarandi from Argentina.
A common occurrence in Football is for fans of a club to predominantly use one word in the singular form rather than plural to describe their club.
I mean of course, fans of Manchester City and and Adelaide United calling their teams City and United respectively. It’s not really a moniker but exhibits the power of the singular of the plural to great effect.
In Serie A, singular dominates plural in monikers except for when referring to a club by its colours. Juventus FC, based in Turin is the most famous example. Juventus meaning youth in Latin led to the team ironically being dubbed La Vecchia Signora which means The Old Lady, the lady part being what fans would lovingly call their team. Milan are known as The Devil (Il Diavolo), Inter is The Big Grass Snake (Il Biscione), Genoa is The Griffin (Il Grifone), Roma in addition to being known as the Wolves is The Magic One (La Maggica).
In the Bundesliga, FC Nuremberg refer to themselves as ‘Der Club’ or The Club and sometimes as The Legend or The Glorious (Did you read that Perth Glory fans?) I’m not sure whether it is something to do with the Italian language that makes singular monikers so popular there, if anyone knows why I’d love to hear.
In Gaelic Football, Kerry (Tadgh Kennedy’s team) are known as The Kingdom. In the battle of the corporate monikers, New York Red Bulls is beaten by Red Bull Salzburg (as much as I detest what Red Bull did to that old club – I refuse to buy the drink). Teams are often known by their colors, the Carlton Blues or the All-Blacks. But this can also work in the singular form. Valencia in La Liga are The Orange, Villareal are the Yellow Submarine and Spain’s national team are known as The Red.
The modern Australian phenomenon of singular abstract entity monikers is probably a copy off the Americans who did it first – and better. Whilst The Orlando Magic is not too crash hot, The Miami Heat is iconic and Utah Jazz works as well.
In the MLS, whilst there’s a few duds, New England Revolution, LA Galaxy and Chicago Fire are all fine sporting Monikers. New England Revolution is particularly clever albeit difficult to cheer for.
Australia has some great examples too. Melbourne Victory is a classy name. ‘Victory’ is a reference to both the V on their shirts (taken from AFL State of Origin) and the state of Victoria, and of course the desired result of games.
Wellington Phoenix rolls off the tongue and you can cheer for it. I believe that The Melbourne Storm works as well.
I’m not one for naming teams after the weather, The Thunder and The Hurricanes make me cringe, but this has a classic ring to it and you can actually cheer for it without feeling like an idiot. Having said that, Super Rugby’s Stormers is equally good.
It is clear from all this that it’s not important whether something is singular or plural to it being a great sporting moniker for a sporting team like I used to believe. This is proven by the case of Port Adelaide.
Port Adelaide fans don’t call their team The Power, only the media does. The fans call their team Port which is one of the best names in the AFL but is at the same time equally singular as ‘The Power’. The Powers sounds just as silly as The Power.
Back to Melbourne Heart then. Weirdly and unexpectedly, the name has grown on me a lot. I’ve also learnt, to my embarrassment, that the full name of Hearts from Scotland is Heart of Midlothian.
Pluralisation and singularisation obviously don’t matter, Perhaps a name grows classic over the years, just like anything in the marketing world (Coca-Cola, Toyota). Perhaps the most important ingredient to an iconic moniker is time.
Nah, I couldn’t yell “Carn The Power” in a million years.
The Best of Singular: The Toon, Tottenham Hotspur, Melbourne Victory, North and South, Melbourne Storm, The Old Lady, The Devil, Miami Heat, La Galaxy, The Yellow Submarine, Wellington Phoenix.
The Best of Plural: The Gunners, The Toffees, Bloods, Pies, Shinboners, Packers, All-Blacks, Rabbitohs, Roosters, Wallabies, Springbocks, Socceroos, Azzuri, Yankees, Packers.
What’s your favorite sporting moniker Roarers?
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