No more Crusaders! But what to replace it with?
BOTH the Prime Minster and the Minister for Sport and Recreation have strongly denied pressuring the Crusaders to change their name. Of course, once politicians deny anything, the rest of us presume something fishy is going on.
In this case, we don’t need any political pressure as the need for a change is pretty selfevident and the rugby people have even hired a research company who will, for a fee, confirm the obvious.
And it won’t be the last time sports teams will be obliged to change their name. Most were founded in the days before political correctness and in the United States dozens of teams are being asked to drop offensive names. Braves and Redskins being common examples. New Zealand rugby teams like the Chiefs, the Warriors and the Northland Taniwha must brace themselves for a similar controversy over the use of indigenous names and imagery.
An Aussie Rules team has already changed its name from the Aboriginal AllStars to the Indigenous All Stars, creating a major problem as no Aussie Rules fans are able to pronounce ‘‘indigenous’’. In Edmonton, Canada, almost every sports team is called the Eskimos, but that will change. In New Zealand sports history there are countless examples of Pakeha versus Maori games and a golf report in the Manawatu Standard in 1907 reads,
‘‘The score shows that the Pakeha team are leading with 31 wins as against their dusky opponents’’. Try writing that today!
While race has stirred up most controversy, it wasn’t until the Crusaders debate that religion caused much strife. When rugby clubs were
formed in the 19th century the Catholic community, seeking solidarity and identity in a Protestant society, chose names like Celtic and Marist. Celtic because of its Irish connection and Marist because many of the players had been taught by clergy of the Marist orders. Marist denotes devotion to the Virgin Mary, hardly the stuff of rough and ready colonial rugby, but that worried noone. It seems the only New Zealand town which has not ended up with a Marist or Celtic rugby team is Dunedin. Perhaps forming an openly ‘‘Irish’’ club in Presbyterian Dunedin was taking a risk? The men who formed the Dunedin Rugby Club in 1871 (the first in Otago) had no religious agenda but in 1919 the club formed an alliance with the Christian Brothers’ School to boost numbers when the club was in danger of losing senior status.
When I first followed Otago rugby, clubs were simply called by their given name. Commentators like Iain Gallaway, then and now, an astute preserver of the English language, might from time to time call University ‘‘Varsity’’ or ‘‘the students’’ and perhaps the multihued ZingariRichmond team might be ‘‘the colours’’ but outlandish nicknames were, thankfully, not part of the rugby scene.
But I was away for some years and when I came back I eagerly turned to Paul Dwyer’s entertaining weekly take on the local rugby scene in the ODT. But I sometimes struggle to understand what the hell he is on about. Take this paragraph from a recent column: ‘‘The Spanner-heads (13+) need to thrash the Broncos at the Toolbox to justify the expense. Kaik should win at the High Veldt but the Hawks (12) can fly so the upset is on. Varsity (13+) too good for the Magpies. The Sharks (13+) at the Sandpit are just the big kid on the block over Zingers. See you round the traps.’’
Keen rugby followers love it and the fact they understand it proves that nicknames are a form of tribal bonding. It also seems at first glance that there is nothing obviously offensive about these nicknames.
One team name I grapple with is the Maggots. It’s the nickname of the Maniototo rugby team of which I am a keen supporter. There’s some humour in it and one day a local will tell me who dreamed it up. It certainly wasn’t the product of thinktanks, surveys, attitudinal research and expensive travel by a big city marketing firm. Perhaps just a Speight’sinspired comment at an aftermatch at the Ranfurly stadium.
What, then, becomes of the Crusaders? First, the new name must be shorter. One syllable, perhaps? Or two at the most. Rugby commentators struggle with anything longer. (Hence the ugly ‘‘Landers’’ and ‘‘Canes.’’)
My choices are ‘‘The Lambs’’ or ‘‘The Pilgrims’’. The first a marketing boost for sheep farmers and the second a literary allusion for lovers of Geoffrey Chaucer (flyhalf, England vs Scotland, 1365). Both are soft names which lull the opposition into a false sense of security. Cunning, eh?
We have not heard the last of this name change business. Political correctness will continue to govern our behaviour and soon someone will query the name ‘‘All Blacks’’. ‘‘All Men of Colour’’, perhaps? Not the same, is it?