What's in a name? Plenty

[BulldogBelle]

Good article...



What's in a name? Plenty
The Age
Peter Hanlon | June 3, 2008

TOMORROW morning, at a not-so-long-ago decaying ground in Melbourne's inner-west, another step will be taken in a football club's rejuvenation. The club sits third on the AFL ladder, has just beaten the top team, and is enjoying its best start to a season ever.

These are heady times for this club, which is as proud of its history as rivals who boast of much more than just one day of ultimate glory. Given past struggles just to survive, it is a time to celebrate its very being. To rejoice in who it is.

It's a shame you have to scroll all the way down to the fine print to be reminded of this club's true name: Footscray.

It is more than 11 years since the administration of then-new president David Smorgon complemented its new off-field personnel with a change of name, playing venue, logo and club song, along with a new coach in Terry Wallace. At the time, the club's membership had dipped to just over 10,000 — lower than when it won the 1954 flag.

Then, the club was seeking a new beginning, having played its last game at Whitten Oval. As Smorgon said yesterday, few people leaving the ground after the Bulldogs had beaten West Coast that day would have believed that any heavy machinery moving in a decade later would have been charged with anything but demolition.

But that was then. The Doggies are now alive and well, with more than 27,000 members, continuing AFL largesse and the fruits of government funding materialising at their Whitten Oval home. The new Elite Learning Centre, to be opened tomorrow, is just one stage of a development that will bolster a football club and benefit a community.

Arguably, the time for a new beginning was right in 1996. But, as callers to talkback radio in recent days have proposed, maybe now is a good time to go back, while moving proudly forward. For that song to again begin: "Sons of the 'Scray".

Smorgon says a reversion from the trading name Western Bulldogs to Footscray Football Club is not on the agenda, "nowhere on the list of 100 things we've got to do". While he is president, he says, it will not happen.

He doesn't doubt that, to many, the name is important. "But I say to those people, we've moved on. We are the Western Bulldogs, and we're creating our history on the back of the Footscray Football Club history."

The change was made, Smorgon says, because of a belief that the club's identity was limited, that as Western Bulldogs they could better tap into sponsorship, build coteries and other support from the entire western region of Melbourne, with its 600,000-plus people. "We felt that Footscray was a restriction on growing our brand."

But football supporters do not see their club as a brand. They see it as players, people, a jumper. Something to love, that their mum and dad loved before them. Something to cheer and be cheered by. Something that gives them hope. Of no club is this truer than the Dogs.

Smorgon says the change has been a success, although not all that was hoped for has been achieved. Research shows 55% of members reside in the west, up from 50%. Given the migration to one of Melbourne's boom regions in the past decade, this can hardly be seen as endorsement of the "brand" name.

The transition certainly wasn't seamless, with premiership full-forward Jack Collins tackling Smorgon's administration at the time under the banner of "Footscray Forever".

A website, "Footscray Not Western Bulldogs", maintains the rage today, carrying an AFL ladder featuring Northern Blues, Eastern Hawks, Central Demons, Country Cats, etc. "Grab a street directory and try and find West Coast Eagles or Port Power in them, let alone Western Bulldogs," it barks, concluding that "the only west or western I want to know about is Scott West".

Smorgon is not concerned that, in a competition hell-bent on expansion, the word "Western" may soon be shared with another team, residing in the Sydney market that so tantalises the AFL.

As for North Melbourne's recent decision to embrace its identity and relegate Kangaroos to nickname status, he could not comprehend that club's thinking.

Yet surely the notion of catching support with an all-encompassing name sells short those 27,000-plus members, who proudly see their club just as it is styled in the last line of their song: "The team of the mighty west." People who would be proud to again call their club Footscray, no matter where they live.

[LostDoggy]

What a negative attitude towards the main point of the story - opening of the ELC.

Fair dinkum.

If it was Collingwood, the press would be falling all over them.

[bornadog]

The Western Bulldogs name is here to stay, so get over it.

Stupid article, how about talking about the redevopment and the benefits its going to bring to not only the club but for people in the WESTERN suburbs.

[alwaysadog]

No longer can we expect most journalists to actually tell us what is going on or even to report a single fact. Today the craft is all about hype, opinion and attempts to stir up controversy. At least this piece was true to the new credo.

[Rocket Science]

whatever the merits of the journalism employed here, and I'd agree the arguments made aren't the most compelling ones I've come across, personally I'd still love to see the club's name restored.

[LostDoggy]

Western Bulldogs are here to say and I wish people would stop complaining about it. Though I would have no objections to us changimg our name back to Footscray, I am just tired of hearing people complaining about it.

[The Pie Man]

I won't complain - in 96 I understood the need to broaden our appeal and to date they've done that. Smorgon (and Irene Chatfield/Peter Gordon before them) are legends. I personally would love to see us called Footscray again, but I won't complain.

What I do note is the since JB changed the Roos back to North Melbourne, they crack 30,000 members. I don't think it would kill our 'brand' name. But no compaints, seriously, just worth a thought.

Also, if we won a flag, it would be nice to see our captain on the dais say something like 'this is for the scray' like Kirk/Sydney did with the Bloods. It's important to recognise that history

[Twodogs]

I've lived almost my entire life within a decent torp's range of Whitten Oval. My family have lived in Footscray for generations. I'm devoted to my team and a proud native of my home suburb but I wish to **** that we'd get over the whole Footscray thing. It's gone, it's no longer our name.


We arent The Prince Imperials anymore, we arent Footscray anymore, we are The Western Bulldogs.

[LostDoggy]

Compelling reasons enough, Rocket Science? Any compelling reasons why we WOULD change our name back apart from appealing to nostalgia to a past filled largely with failure, instability and near bankruptcy?

You would kill a very real potential to become a super-club on the back of going back to a time that we all feared for our very existence?

[LostDoggy]

ps. I just had a look at the FNWB website, and every reason that the person who put up the site has written for us to change our name back is logically flawed. I COULD go over every single reason and rip it apart rationally but it should suffice that I say he has tried to dress up an emotional argument with a rational veneer.

Now, it's fair enough some (including myself) feel emotionally about the name change, but let's not pretend that it is in any way logical or defensible in a reasonable sense, because it is not. It is a fundamentally irrational position, which is not wrong in itself, but let's at least admit it to ourselves.

I wish we were still Footscray too, in my heart, but my head says that the name change has had nothing but upside to it. Those of us who miss it still call it the 'Scray anyway. We are not, and will never be, the West Coast Eagles (a corporate creation), because there are those of us who will always be here to tell the old stories.

--

ps. Funny story -- A mate and I call up ticketmaster/ticketek (I forget which), and he asks for tickets to the Footscray - Essendon game, and the call centre guy (I will refrain from calling him a muppet) says 'There's no such game this weekend, sir'. My mate repeats himself, and the guy insists that the only game Essendon is involved in this weekend is one against the 'Western Bulldogs'. My mate -- who is nearly 70, and is as dyed-in-the-wool a Dogs man as they come -- couldn't stop laughing. The name change hasn't changed his love for the club one single whit.

Re: the call centre guy, my only rationale for his innocent ignorance would be that Ticketek/ticketmaster have call centres in India/Phillipines/Sydney, where the subtleties of our beautiful game of AFL are clearly lost.