Mike Greenaway: The nonsense of team names

The simultaneous arrival of the professional rugby era and political democracy in South Africa produced a flurry of name-changing that must confuse the hell out of non-South Africans.

Pre-1994, the year of South Africa's first free and fair elections, rugby teams had not changed their names since their formation.

Thus touring All Black teams over the 20th century would have played against teams such as Transvaal, Northern Transvaal or Natal, but when the last All Blacks were here these names had gone.

This was because those names were offensive to previously oppressed citizens.

The province of "Transvaal" was renamed Gauteng and the rugby team was faced with a problem. They first opted to call themselves the Gauteng Lions (the lion was always the emblem on the red and white hooped Transvaal jerseys). But the name "Gauteng Lions" did not exactly roll off the tongue and they soon renamed themselves the "Golden Lions".

Their neighbours up in the interior had the same problem.

"Northern Gauteng" sounded terrible so the Pretoria team also decided to make their nickname the "Blue Bulls" their official name. Thus we have the Blue Bulls Rugby Union and the Golden Lions Rugby Union.

South Africa's other leading rugby provinces have had better luck in keeping their names.

Cape Town's Western Province has not changed and Bloemfontein's Free State has simply added its emblem to its name and is called the Free State Cheetahs.

This trend of having an animal as part of the name was begun by Natal province in 1996. The Durban union was the first to recognise the marketing potential of having a team "brand", as is the case in the United States.

Historically, people from Natal were known as "banana boys", but the Natal Rugby Union (NRU) felt it could not effectively market the banana.

Durban is also famous for the sharks that lurk off its Indian Ocean beaches and the Shark was adopted.

Traditionalists went berserk. For 100 years, before every Natal home match, a supporter was allowed to run on to the field and deposit a huge banana leaf on the centre spot. But the NRU banned this because it wanted people to move away from the banana as an emblem.

There was a furious debate among the folk of Natal and eventually the NRU took to banning spectators from bringing bananas or anything with bananas on them (such as T-shirts) into Kings Park Stadium. Emotions ran high.

Soldiers from Durban who had fought in World War I and II were known as the "Banana Boys". Some old-timers swore to never again set foot in King Park Stadium, and they never did.

But, as we well know, the Shark won the day and the marketing of the Sharks emblem became a great business success story.

When the Super 10 kicked off in the early 1990s, South African teams competed in their historical names - Transvaal, Natal, Northern Transvaal etc. This continued into the early years of the Super 12. Then came the age of confusion.

The South African Rugby Football Union decided to change the way their four teams would be made up for the Super 12.

Previously, the top four finishers in the Currie Cup automatically qualified for the following year's Super 12. But this meant the players from the teams that did not qualify lost out on Super 12 experience.

The logical thing to do would have been to draft those players to the four qualifiers, but Sarfu seldom uses logic and it embarked on the calamity that is the regional system.

It saw it worked in New Zealand and without thought copied it.

The vastness of South Africa meant that carving up the 14 provincial unions into four regions was always going to be a disaster.

Also, because each franchise would comprise three or four unions, there was in-fighting over the names of the franchises and how the colours of each union would be reflected.

It was, and is, a monumental cock-up and is one of the reasons South Africa has struggled in the competition. So much drama would have been avoided had it stuck to the four qualifiers from the Currie Cup system.

The biggest headache was the unfortunate combination of the Lions (based in Johannesburg) and the Cheetahs (Bloemfontein). They copped out by calling them the Cats, but the two teams' fans have never warmed to the name, the colours or the team itself, for that matter.

The Blue Bulls were by far the dominant force in their region and they bullied their new allies into accepting that their franchise would contain the name "Bulls".

The same went for the Sharks. Their partners, the teams from East London and Port Elizabeth, were so weak they meekly accepted the name "Sharks".

Down in the Cape, Western Province's neighbours from the wine lands, the South Western District Eagles and the Boland Cavaliers put up more of a fight. Hence the name "Stormers", after the Cape of Storms.

* Mike Greenaway is chief rugby writer at the Mercury in Durban.