Opinion: 'C'mon you Lattes!'

Ewan McDonald wonders why Aucklanders are so bad at nicknaming their sports teams.

Many years ago, far more than I care to, or indeed can, remember, were my glory days on the sports field. Well, Seymour Park, in Pah Rd, opposite the big brick factory where the Jehovah's Witnesses or it might have been the Seventh Day Adventurers made the Weetbix that my dad brought to the nation on the shelves of Self-Help supermarkets and which would, only three or four decades later, go on to make Richie McCaw and Joe Rokocoko the rugby players they are today, or perhaps later on this year.
We were the Mt Roskill Midgets. We played in maroon (not red) and white halved shirts. Stitched up in cotton fabric, hand-dyed from those little metal capsules, possibly bought from the Self-Help supermarket in Sandringham that became a Bollywood picture theatre and is now the imported spice and fabric warehouse.
Our strip was not made by Nike or Adidas or Lotto in Fiji or Timor Leste or Cambodia. It was made by Mrs McDonald and Mrs Cochran and Mrs Fleet and Mrs Cavanagh, and my shirt was different from my brother Martin's, because he had the maroon on the left half and the white on the right, and I had the maroon on the right and white on the left, because that was the material that Mum had left over when she'd cut out the pattern and run it up on the Singer sewing machine.
And we were the Mt Roskill Midgets because we played for Mt Roskill against Eden and Pt Chev and One'unga and ... well, because we were small. I played my first game, in an illustrious career that would see me go on to represent the Wellington Under-9s, Wellington College First XI, and the Claudelands Rovers Old Farts, at the age of 4. Before I went to school, in Mrs Ladner's class at Maungawhau.
Dad was the referee. With the self-assurance of a man who had once been halfback for the Hutt Valley High First XV (rugby), wearing a maroon and white jersey and beanie handknitted by my mother, he adopted complete understanding of the nuances of soccer, blew a whistle and told me to stand there. On the halfway line. Which I did, for the entire 10 minutes of my debut in the sporting firmament. That was the first half. At oranges, he told me to turn around and stand facing the other way.
Sport used to be like that. Like so many things, it was so much easier in the old days. You met a bunch of mates after church, or work, or at the pub, and decided to start a football club. There was the slight problem that no one could agree on the rules, or the number of players, or the scoring system, but those minor disagreements would be overcome in time.
For a name, you simply chose the town (Middlesbrough), the church (Villa Cross or St Mary's), the factory (Newton Heath Railwaymen or Thames Ironworks) or the pub (Plymouth Argyle, Northwich Victoria).
If there were two clubs in town, you could add the suburb for clarification (Preston North End). If you didn't have a paddock and had to roam the district to find a pitch to kick a ball about on, you sportingly warned the opposition by calling your team Bolton Wanderers or Blackburn Rovers.
And that was pretty much good enough for a century or more of British and European and South American and Aussie and Kiwi sports clubs.
The Americans, running their major teams as franchises rather than clubs or associations - it is an oddity that the world's leading capitalist nation uses a uniquely socialist business model for its professional sports - were thus more aware of marketing needs and merchandise profits. They have always been more keen on branding.
The Superbowl champions, the Green Bay Packers, are a co-operative owned by residents of a small Wisconsin town and take their name from the place's onetime major employer and team sponsor, a meat-packing factory. The Los Angeles Lakers first played basketball in Detroit in 1946 as the Gems. After one season the team was sold and moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota. The state motto is "Land of 10,000 Lakes", which spawned the new name, retained when the franchise moved to LA in 1960.
Somewhere in the 90s, Aussie and Kiwi and Pommy sports clubs decided that what had been pretty much good enough for a century or more was past its use-by date. They would have to adopt marketing and merchandising and branding and nicknames. You may care to consider the collision between this trend and the arrival of Sky Sports in all three nations. You'd be bang on the money, so to speak.
It's led to some asinine appellations. For more than 100 years, Sunderland fans in north-east England called their soccer team "the Rokerites" because they played at Roker Park. When the club built a new stadium, the local newspaper ran a poll for a new nickname. The winner? "The Black Cats". Why? Not a soul knows. It's not even on their badge. Sorry ... logo.
Given their laconic sense of humour, it's small wonder the Aussies are rather good at finding original monikers for their teams: league's Parramatta Eels, South Sydney Rabbitohs, North Queensland Cowboys, Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks from the southern beaches, all have strong historic back-stories. Not sure about the women's soccer team, though: hard to see too much impassioned barracking for "the Matildas".
Kiwis still haven't got the hang of it. Historically, the two sports teams with the most parochial support are the Auckland and Canterbury rugby sides: neither has generated a nickname from the supporters' hearts and minds in well over a century apiece.
The Super XV's enforced mergers have created a disaffection from traditional fans. Those who watch do so from the disembodied dispassion of the lounge, and feel little allegiance to ... wait for it, this'll get the blood pumping at Eden Park on a wet winter's night ... "the Blues".
Bet you can't find a Bay of Plenty rugby supporter who calls his team "the Steamers" (marketers allege it's from White Island and the Rotorua geysers); anyone from Palmy giving "the Turbos" a serve; or a Wellington nut who cheers for "the Lions".
Until last week I'd have said the transtasman netball championship was hands-down winner of the worst line-up of nicknames: Central Pulse, so badly performed that you'd struggle to find one; Northern Mystics, possibly because they went missing in action for so many seasons; Waikato/Bay of Plenty Magic, shamelessly stolen from US basketball; the Canterbury Tactix, presumably to remind their players they should use 'em occasionally.
Until last week, when the new Auckland basketball franchise announced it would be known as the Auckland Pirates. Coach Kenny Stone, or rather a public relations consultant who deserves to be ejected for a technical foul, was quoted thus: "Watch out, the Auckland Pirates will have other teams walking the plank in no time."
Pray tell, what is the connection between Auckland and pirates? We've got a lot of sea around us? Come to think of it, what's the rationale for the premier basketball team, the Breakers, based on the North Shore, better known for small ripples around Narrow Neck Beach?
Is it because of our darker style of humour, our reticent national nature, that we don't do nicknames well? Is it because Auckland doesn't have too many symbols of unity or identity? Go the "One Tree Hills!" Up the "Bridgers!" C'mon you Lattes!"
Could be. At least we've been spared one indignity. Wellington's got the Phoenix.
- Ewan McDonald is the editor of The Aucklander and a former national sports administrator