Keep Heart red and white

Manchester City’s recent purchase of Melbourne Heart has been a welcome addition to the Australian football scene. The clubs new owners are set to provide massive investment in the form of a new home training base for the club, as well as an academy. This is beneficial to both Melbourne Heart and the A-League.

As soon as the purchase of Melbourne Heart was made by Manchester City, documentation surfaced which showed that the name Melbourne City Football Club was trademarked by the Melbourne Heart, solid enough evidence to show that the new owners were going to change the name of the club to align with the Manchester City brand.

The name ‘Melbourne Heart’ was subject to much conjecture when the franchise was first established four years ago. The Heart was not a name of any other sports franchise in the world and drew the ire of much criticism from sections of the media and the football world.

Fans of the club are split over the decision to rebrand. For many the name ‘Heart’ has grown on them to the point where they identify it as a part of the club. Others are not fussed by the name, as to them it wasn’t that great in the first place.

The club issued a statement saying that they would make no decision until the end of the season on the future of the club, but said if they did change their name to Melbourne City FC they would try to keep the Heart branding in one form or another.

A similar problem was encountered at Hull City FC in England, where the new owner, Egyptian businessman Assem Allam, wanted to rebrand to the club as the Hull Tigers. The controversy overshadowed much of the recent premier league season for Hull City FC. Fans regularly chanted “City until I die” at their home games to get the message across to their owner.

The English Football Association announced on the 10th of April that the application to change the name to Hull Tigers had been rejected in a vote – 63.5 per cent of the council opposed the name change.

The word ‘Heart’ is a name that is more synonymous as a description for the fans. For four seasons fans of the Melbourne Heart have watched their team struggle a great deal, missing finals three out of four seasons with a highest finish of 6th.

But fans have stuck by their team through thick and thin. They are loyal.

The change to Melbourne City FC, while keeping the name Heart involved in some way or another, initially appeared to be a fair trade off for the new investment arriving at the club, and would give fans plenty to get excited about in the lead up to next season under the banner of the red and white.

That was until rumblings started creeping in that the new owners were keen to change the colours their newly purchased Melbourne club to sky blue to align with the Manchester City brand. Since the takeover, and for much of the season, most fans heard these rumours and thought nothing of them, with the thought process of: “surely they won’t be as stupid as to change the colours of the club because the colours represent who we are as a club”.

Concrete confirmation of the new owner’s intentions to change the colours were founded by several complaints from Sydney FC management and fans opposing an application by the Melbourne Heart with Football Federation Australia to change the name and colours of their newly acquired Melbourne club.

Sydney FC is fervently opposed to Melbourne Heart changing their colours as sky blue in the A-League is synonymous with Sydney FC. They are even affectionately referred to as the “Sky Blues”.

To have two teams of the same colour in a league is a foreign concept in Australia. You could never imagine two AFL teams sharing the same strip; the concept is so foreign in fact that Port Adelaide were not allowed to wear their black and white jail bar jumper when they entered the AFL due to a clash with Collingwood.

Many football pundits in Australia have drawn the conclusion that in English football many teams are the same colour, paving the way for the same thing to happen in Australia.

It is true that in English football many teams wear the same colours but there are also 737 English teams (including over 80 professional football teams) that entered the FA cup last season – there is bound to be some overlap. The circumstances in England are also substantially different to the one Melbourne Heart find itself in.

The Melbourne Heart’s main cross town rival, the Melbourne Victory also wears blue. A darker shade, yes, but all rivalry born from the traditional red vs blue Melbourne derby will be lost should the new owners of the Melbourne Heart decide to change their club to sky blue. Attending a Melbourne Heart game you can hear the fans cheer “Melbourne is red and white” – it is part of their identity to be red and white.

The last game of the season, which coincided with Harry Kewell’s farewell game, saw a 10,003 strong crowd attend the game against Western Sydney Wanderers. Signs were distributed and displayed with pride by the majority of the fans. The signs read “Keep Melbourne red & white”.

It was a clear protest to the new owners that the fans of the club are not pleased by their intentions to change the colours. The situation of the colour change is not dissimilar to the current plight of Cardiff City FC fans.

Cardiff City FC, from 1908 to 2012 wore a blue strip with white shorts and for all of that time they have been known as the Bluebirds. A change in the colours to red was agreed as a trade off for investment in the club by new owner, Vincent Tan.

However, this has not gone down well with the fans, who regularly protest and hold up signs reading “Tan out” during their games. The fans protests so much as it is their club’s identity at stake – being blue is all they have ever known and how they identify with the club. This is being stripped away from them.

Identity is a massive part of football, whatever the code, whether we realise it or not. When a change is made to the name, a part of their identity is lost, but it’s not always the end of the world.

We have seen with the Western Bulldogs rebranded from Footscray, and maintained their loyal supporter base as it was more with the Red, Blue and White and the famous Bulldog that the fans identify.

A similar situation would occur if the new owners were simply changing the branding of the club to Melbourne City, as the fans would continue their loyal support as they identify just as strongly with the red and white stripes.

When you change the name and the colours there is nothing left for fans to identify with – the reality of the situation is yet to dawn on the clubs new owners. In essence what they are doing is creating a completely new club.

Yes, the club is only four years old, but that doesn’t mean there was no emotion invested, no money invested or no heart invested. The emotional connection to the club runs deep with the fans, which is what draws them to show up each and every week, even when languishing on the bottom of the table for much of the season. Without the name or the colours, that emotional connection is lost.

As stated previously, the name change of Hull City FC to Hull Tigers was rejected by the English FA due to the change being opposed by the fans and stripping the club of its identity. This outcome should prove to the FFA that there is precedent to reject a rebranding of a club.

Manchester City should also look closely at the popularity of Cardiff City Football Club owner, Vincent Tan, with the Cardiff City fans before proceeding with their application to change the colours of the Melbourne Heart.

Common sense must prevail in this situation and the colours of the Melbourne Heart must stay red and white.

I genuinely fear that without the colours, it won’t mean anything.