Australian Football

Lost words of Australian Football 2: Mustard Pots, Mayblooms and more

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If you're a Victorian footy fan under sixty years of age, you probably haven't heard Essendon informally described as anything other than the Bombers or the Dons. Likewise, Hawthorn are the Hawks, and Melbourne are the Demons. 

But it wasn't always so.

Hawthorn only became the Hawks in Round 2, 1943¹, when coach Roy Cazaly decided that a hawk was a more fitting representation of the way he wanted to his charges to play:

Prior to the start of the game at Hawthorn, Roy Cazaly, Hawthorn's coach, told players that in future they would be known as the Hawks instead of the Mayblooms. He expected players to live up to the name by being ready to fight hard and carry the ball away with pace and dash to the goal. — Sporting Globe, 15 May 1943

Before that, Hawthorn had been known as the Mayblooms, the flowers of the May Bush, common in the Hawthorn area.

The Hawks' opponents the following week were Melbourne, who by this stage were known as the Demons. A decade earlier, though, they too had been identified by a floral moniker — the Fuchsias, but their coach, Frank 'Checker' Hughes, had made a similar decision to Cazaly in 1936. According to the Sport Australia Hall of Fame, "Legend has it that, early in his tenure, Hughes told his players: “You are playing like a lot of flowers. Lift your heads and play like demons!”²

While there is little evidence to support this legend, it is true that Hughes made a conscious decision to change the team's nickname prior to the beginning of the 1936 season. According to the Sporting Globe's P.J. Millard, aka "Short Pass", Hughes had said to him before the season began, "I'm giving them & new name, I'm calling them 'The Red Demons'. It should put fire and fighting spirit into them."³

Millard at the time had had doubts about whether Hughes's charges could live up to the new title:

"I must confess that, secretly, I was afraid that the name would not fit such a fearsome name. After seeing Melbourne lick Richmond and South by sheer pluck and stamina, plus uncommon football ability, I take all that back. Yes, "Checker" has galvanised his side into real fighting Demons — a powerful combination that will not admit defeat until the final bell — or even after it, if there is a kick to be had!"³

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The Melbourne v Richmond game appears to have been the one that consolidated the name change, if the response to the post-game address from Richmond president H.L. Roberts is anything to go by (left).⁴

Millard certainly agreed with it, and he left readers in no doubt about his feelings for the old Melbourne nickname:

The name "Red Demons," coined in The Globe, will certainly stick. It fits! What a refreshing change from that sickly nickname of a few years ago—Fuchsias.³

Forty years before the Demons came to pass, many Australian football clubs had no official nickname at all. Some were referred to by names that eventually became official, such as the Magpies at Collingwood, but many simply had their club names adjectivised or pluralised. In South Australia, Port Adelaide players, office-bearers and fans were often referred to Portonians, and the team itself as Ports or The Ports.

This trend was also evident in Victoria, with Geelong (the town known colloquially by many as The Pivot) often referred to as the Pivotonians, and Carlton's players as Carltonians. While Carltonians was used interchangeably with The Blues during that period (before and after the turn of the 20th century), Geelong's mascot and moniker of The Cats was not born until 1923. 

Another common adjectivisation of club names in the late 1800s and early 1900s was the simple addition of "-ites". There are numerous mentions of Richmondites and Footscrayites in the newspapers of the time. Richmondites enjoyed relatively common usage from the 1870s through to the 1930s before its usage waned as references to official club mascots increased. 

The use of the word Footscrayites was never quite as common as Richmondites, but it is sprinkled in newspapers from the mid-1880s right up until September 1954, when captain-coach Charlie Sutton boldly declared in The Argus that Footscray would beat Geelong in the Second Semi-Final. Sutton's words carry an air of certainty that today's (publicly at least) more guarded coaches rarely display before a game, but his certainty is matched in the words of his opposition coach Reg Hickey, as seen below:

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As well as Richmondites, the football players were occasionally referred to as the Wasps, or players in "wasp jackets" in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but in 1910 references to Richmond as Tigers began to appear.⁶ That name stuck, and Richmond is rarely referred to as anything but The Tigers nowadays.

St Kilda in its early days were described as both Seasiders and Seagulls, an obvious reference to the club's bayside location, before the Saints name and logo became entrenched. When they were still Mayblooms, Hawthorn was for a short while referred to as the Mustard Pots, alluding to their 1933 jumper, which for that year only was a brown V on a mustard-coloured jumper. (In the years before and after, the jumpers were brown with a mustard-coloured V.)

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Originally known simply as the Maroons, the colour of their jumper, Fitzroy joined the wave of clubs adopting official mascots in the 1930s when they became the Gorillas. This emblem lasted until the late 1950s, by which time it had become the target of ridicule among opposition fans. From 1957 onward, Fitzroy became known as the Lions.

In Western Australia, WAFL team Subiaco were also originally known as the Maroons. And just as Fitzroy did, they eventually became the Lions, albeit 16 years later, in 1973, and without going through a phase as the Gorillas.

Another WAFL side, West Perth, these days known as the Falcons, were originally called the Cardinals. This, too, was a reference to the club jumper colour. West Perth were in fact originally known as the Blue and Cardinals, then simply the Cardinals, before adopting the Falcon mascot in 1982. The club has also been referred to as the Garlic Munchers, a reference to the eastern European heritage of many of their players.

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Soon after West Perth changed its mascot, fellow WAFL side East Fremantle adopted the Sharks as its nickname. Prior to that the club has been known as simply, Old Easts. In a similar vein, Essendon in its VFA and early VFL days was known as the Same Old. This reference arose from a song sung by "Essendon's Barrackers" in 1889, a 'singing band' that occupied nearly half the grandstand at Essendon games.

The 'Same Old' tag stuck, and Essendon was referred to as the Same Old for decades after. It was still in common usage after the club officially adopted the Bombers nickname during the 1940s, as evidenced in the September 25, 1950 edition of the Argus which described fans celebrating their premiership song, which included the line, "the same old Essendon". 

While we never hear references to the Same Olds these days, some teams have chosen to embrace old nicknames, and even use them to define the club ethos. North Melbourne adopted the Kangaroo as its mascot in the lead-up to the 1950 season. It seemed to work well, with the Kangaroos making their first VFL Grand Final in that season.

North's previous unofficial nickname was the Shinboners, a name born either from the many abattoirs and butcheries to be found around the suburb, or the roughhouse tactics for which North's players were renowned — or perhaps both. In any case, the club has in the last two decades re-embraced the name, while keeping the official Kangaroos nickname. The club often invokes the "Shinboner spirit" phrase, and in 2005 named player Glenn Archer as the Shinboner of the Century.

In a similar vein, Sydney, known official as the Swans since the early 1930s (when it was still South Melbourne), has made use of one of South's early nicknames, the Bloods, to define the club's tenor. On the Sydney Swans website, the following declaration can be found:

"The Bloods Culture. It's what bonds us all. It’s taken us to our greatest heights. And unites us through the tough moments."

One colloquialism that appears to have bypassed Victorian football teams is the pluralisation of clubs' "directional identifier". In the NSW Rugby League (now the National Rugby League), the Eastern Suburbs, Western Suburbs and South Sydney teams were commonly referred to as Easts, Wests and Souths respectively. In the VFL, South Melbourne and North Melbourne have almost always been shorted to North and South, rather than Norths and Souths.

Names and nicknames have ever changed in the Australian football landscape. This article has touched on just a few of those. In South Australia, South Adelaide only became the Panthers in 1957, having at one stage been known as the Freshwaters. Meanwhile, Woodville changed from Woodpeckers to Warriors in 1983, looking to adopt a tougher demeanor.

In country football, teams have changed nicknames as a result of merging, or to avoid replicating another team's nickname when moving from one league to another. 

Clubs will continue to adopt new names and mascots as they evolve and change. As names like Same Old and Roosters disappear, the new-age ones such as Giants and Thunder take over. While such changes will always continue, it's nice to look back and remember the nicknames and mascots of the past, and their origins, too. 

Long may we remember Old Easts, the Woodpeckers and the Pivotonians.