SA’s top 20 quirkiest footy club nicknames and the meanings behind them
Which SA footy clubs have the quirkiest nicknames? And what are the reasons behind them? Footy writer Matt Turner has ranked his favourite 20 nicknames from across the state.
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Footy leagues around South Australia are infiltrated by Magpies, Tigers, Eagles, Bulldogs and Roosters.
Those are the five most common club nicknames across the state — almost every competition has them.
In all, there are more clubs with the Magpies moniker than any other with 21, followed by Tigers (20), Eagles (17) and Bulldogs, Roosters (both 16).
But other clubs have gone outside the square when it comes to choosing nicknames.
After assessing each of SA’s senior competitions, football writer Matt Turner has ranked the state’s top 20 when it comes to originality and quirk, and learnt the origin of their monikers.
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20. CBC Old Collegians Dolphins
Dolphins have been used as a Christian symbol and three of the aquatic mammals are on the Christian Brothers College logo.
But CBC Old Collegians was originally called the Brothers after forming in 1978 before becoming the Dolphins during the mid-1980s.
“A lot of our original players don’t refer to the club as the Dolphins, never have and never will — always the Brothers,” CBCOC president Simon Byrnes said.
“We do use both — ‘we are the Brothers’ is what our motto is but we don’t use the Brothers logo.”
Adding to the nickname’s quirk is that both the college and club are located in the city, rather than near the beach.
VFL club Frankston is also known as the Dolphins.
19. Blackwood Woods
You do not require too many guesses to deduce where Blackwood got its nickname from.
“It’s just a shortening of the word ‘Woods’,” club president Kris Winchester confirmed.
“We’re proud that we didn’t change our nickname when a lot of clubs had traditional names.
“We just stuck with Woods.”
Even though the moniker is simply a shortening of the club’s name, its lack of originality actually adds to its quirk.
Blackwood also has an internal group that is a play on the Woods nickname — the Axemen — featuring life members, former presidents and other club people who pay to join.
18. Edwardstown Towns
Like Blackwood, Edwardstown’s moniker is a shortening of its club name.
Long-time Edwardstown volunteer Peter Dabinett does not remember the Towns having any other nickname — and he has been at the club since 1963.
“We’ve always been the Towns or we sometimes get called Townies,” Dabinett said.
17. Para Hills Big Reds
Founded in 1970, Para Hills was once called the Saints and wore St Kilda-style guernseys.
But eventually the club changed to Big Reds and adopted a kangaroo as its emblem.
In keeping with the nickname, Para Hills these days wears a predominantly red guernsey with a black and white V.
Para Hills president Scott Charlton was unsure of the origin of the Big Reds moniker but said having red as the club’s colour might have played some part.
16.Pinnaroo Supa Roos
There are plenty of teams called the Kangaroos across Australia and a fair few Roos too.
But Pinnaroo are the only Supa Roos.
Pinnaroo was originally formed in 1908, only to split into two separate teams, South Pinnaroo and North Pinnaroo, 17 years later.
They rejoined forces from 1944-47, then became two entities again from 1947-74, when the united club adopted the nickname Supa Roos.
“The two clubs amalgamated and we had to come up with new colours, new name, new everything,” Pinnaroo stalwart Barry Sharrad said.
“There was an advert around at the time, and you still see it around occasionally, of a kangaroo running fast and running so fast his legs look like a tyre with streaks behind him, so we picked that up as our logo.
“And of course Pinnaroo rhyming with kangaroo and kangaroos being in the area, we ran with it.”
Sharrad was unsure of the reasons for spelling it ‘Supa’, instead of ‘Super’.
“It may have been how it was spelt on the logo we copied but I just can’t recall, or possibly because we’re from the country and can’t spell,” he said with a laugh.
15. Roxby Districts Miners
Roxby Districts was the first footy team in the outback town and club officials did not look too far for its nickname when it was established in 1986.
“It’s a mining town and there were lots of miners underground who played footy,” Roxby Districts and Far North Football League secretary Bev Zeptner said.
The club chose to be red and white because they were Western Mining Corporation’s colours.
Roxby Districts’ logo features a mine shaft and the ‘x’ in the club name is formed by a shovel and pick overlapping.
14. Ironbank-Cherry Gardens Thunderers
The Thunder is not a rare nickname — but Thunderers is.
Inaugural Ironbank-Cherry Gardens president Brian Morgan believed the Thunderers moniker originated from the local cricket club but “exactly how it started, I don’t know”.
Incidentally, Thunderer is a nickname for Thor, the Norse God of Thunder, played in recent Marvel films by Australian actor Chris Hemsworth.
13. Angle Vale Owls
An Angle Vale Primary School student came up with the Owls nickname as part of a competition to name the area’s first junior footy team.
The Crows’ inaugural AFL flag in 1997 sparked students’ interest in forming a side the next year, so the school called on locals to submit a moniker and logo.
An entry from Joel Elliott, an Angle Vale student at the time, was chosen as the winner from a stack of others that included Lightning, Tigers, Lions, Cats, Panthers and Fighters.
When Angle Vale formed a senior club for the 2008 season, officials chose to stick with the Owls.
Former Owls president Colin Sherriff has kept newspaper clippings from Angle Vale’s early days before the seniors were formed.
“Angle Vale was originally just a school team,” said Sherriff, who helped start the senior club.
“We had to change the mascot (for 2008) because it was very much a junior thing — we would’ve got no guys coming to our club.”
Interestingly, Angle Vale’s women’s team has given itself the nickname, the Hooters.
12. Flinders University Crabs
Flinders University was originally called the Double Blues when it formed in 1966 before becoming the Investigators then switching to the Crabs.
“It comes from the colours, I guess — double blue and white, and crabs are blue and white,” club treasurer Bob Bullitis said.
“And it’s a bit of fun.”
11. Morphett Vale Emus
It is on the Australian coat of arms but the emu is not a popular footy team nickname for some reason.
For Morphett Vale, a local pub and winery apparently gave the club its inspiration.
An Emu Hotel has been in the area since the 1800s and there was also an Emu Winery, so club officials adopted the bird as its emblem.
Former SFL president Chris Leahy said Morphett Vale was the Emus before he joined the competition in the early 1960s.
“It’s a strange tie up with (club colours) red and black — you never see any red and black emus,” Leahy said with a laugh.
Morphett Vale’s nickname may not be common but it is not as quirky as others further up this list.
10. PHOS Camden Phantoms
The famed comic character the Phantom provided the inspiration behind Plympton High Old Scholars Football Club changing its nickname from Panthers in 1987.
The PHOS president of the time, Jim Jackaman, was obsessed with the crime-fighting ghost who walks and was able to rebadge the club, which was formed in 1972, after seeking permission from the Phantom comic’s US creator Lee Falk.
PHOS merged with Camden in 1994 and kept the Phantoms emblem.
“Falk gave us the authority to do it, as long as we were a not-for-profit, which we were, so we were able to use his artwork,” Phantoms president Mike Hamilton said.
“The funny thing is the bloke who used to draw for the Phantom comic globally, one of the cartoonists, lived in the Barossa Valley.
“All of a sudden we had (Tony) Modra taking screamers as the Phantom and rebranded the whole club.”
While the Phantom wears purple in the comic strip and movie, PHOS Camden’s club colours are blue and yellow.
But the club has a Phantom mask pictured on its guernseys.
9. Kilburn Chics
The 96-year-old club was originally called Chicago, the name of the district at the time.
But when a local post office opened in the area in 1911, causing mail to sometimes head to the US, and as a result of Chicago’s tainted reputation because of gangsters at the time, residents pushed for a new suburb name and it became Kilburn in 1930.
The football club adopted the Chics nickname at some stage to honour the area’s history
“If you take the first four letters out of Chicago and add an s, you’ve got the Chics,” Kilburn stalwart Phil Martin said.
“People thought we used to be called Chickens and that used to really annoy some people.”
Kilburn changed from the Chics to the Knights in 1998 for a handful of seasons before switching back.
“A life member (Steven O’Connor) came back and wanted to make Kilburn sound a bit better than it was … but a lot of people didn’t like it and I didn’t like it,” Martin said.
“We’re Kilburn, the Kilburn Chics, not the Knights.”
8. Myponga-Sellicks Mudlarks
“Have you ever seen their oval in midwinter?”
That was former SFL president Chris Leahy’s response when asked if he knew why Myponga-Sellicks’ nickname was Mudlarks.
“In midwinter you’d be better off with a boat on it — it used to be half under water,” he said.
“So that’s where they got the name Mudlarks.
“You took your rubber boots with you there all the time.
“It’s better now than what it used to be — it used to be absolutely shocking and you’d hate to go and play there.”
Myponga-Sellicks president Dean Bagshaw said any nickname with ‘mud’ in it “was probably going to stick” because the oval used to look like a “boghole” or “septic tank”.
“It was a good home-ground advantage because teams didn’t like playing there,” Bagshaw said.
“It was the bottom of a floodplain and had black, swampy mud that used to stink.
“You’d lose boots, the football and everything in there — it was pretty bad there for a while.”
Bagshaw said the oval was now “a pretty good deck” after draining and putting 300 tonnes of sand on it.
7. Mount Burr Mozzies
A radio announcer in the South-East town could have helped inspire the Mozzies nickname.
“Apparently there was a radio presenter on local radio called Stan Elliott who used to read the teams out on Friday nights some years ago and he would call Mount Burr the mosquito fleet,” said Mozzies president Adam Gardiner, who spoke to club stalwarts to learn the moniker’s origins.
“Why he did that, I don’t know.”
Mount Burr, which was formed in 1940 but did not start playing until 1946 due to World War II, wears green and gold guernseys.
6. Noarlunga Shoes
A lot of people think this obscure nickname is related to footwear, namely footy boots.
It isn’t.
The nickname derives from the club’s location at the horseshoe-like bend in the Onkaparinga River.
“It’s all about the river because the river’s got that big horseshoe-shaped bend around it,” former SFL president Chris Leahy said.
“That bend was known as Horseshoe Bend and they (the club) were right in the middle of it.”
Leahy said there was an argument at Noarlunga one year when the horseshoe on the club’s guernsey was upside down.
“Someone had made a set of jumpers and didn’t quite get the pattern right,” he said.
“That caused huge uproar because that’s supposed to let all the luck out of the horseshoe.”
4. Glencoe Murphies
Glencoe has been the Ramblers, Wanderers and Juniors at various times throughout its history but settled on Murphies at some stage.
The South-East town is known for growing potatoes and ‘Murphy’ is slang for the vegetable.
Craig Childs, a former Glencoe president and player, and present committee member, said the club, formed in 1910, enjoyed having a unique nickname.
“(The nickname) is not common — most clubs have the traditional ones like Magpies and Tigers,” Childs said.
“People from the lower southeast have been brought up with it so everyone here accepts it but sometimes when people come from away they say ‘where does that come from?’”
Glencoe previously had a “tough looking man” as its logo before moving to a more traditional shield.
A book on the footy club, called Murphies’ Lore, was released in 2010.
4. Athelstone Raggies
Animals are a popular choice when clubs decide on their nicknames.
But Athelstone, which was formed in 1904 by a group of local market gardeners, chose Raggies because players donned hessian bags as guernseys in the club’s early days.
“It’s a question that comes up a few times a year to me, for sure,” Athelstone president Stephen Young said.
“People ask ‘how come the name?’ and I’m sure others get asked as well.”
Young said the club embraced the nickname.
“If you come to our club, we’ve got a history room and in a frame is a replica hessian guernsey up on the wall,” he said.
3. Port Noarlunga Cockledivers
It is a moniker once associated with Port Adelaide but now symptomatic of the quirky nicknames of the Southern Football League.
Ex-Port Noarlunga president George Castleton introduced the nickname at the blue-and-white SFL club during the 1940s.
According to former SFL president Chris Leahy, Castleton thought ‘we’re down by the sea and we’ve got the swamps, we’ll be the bloody Cockledivers’.
“Porties came back in ‘47 after the war and after the war you couldn’t get jumpers too easily so Castleton went down to St Peter’s College and bought a whole set that looked like the Geelong jumpers,” Leahy said.
“At one stage, Port Adelaide was called Cockledivers and they reckon the flats down by the Port Noarlunga Oval were like the flats at the back of Port Adelaide, so Porties were the Cockledivers as well.
“Mick Fitzgerald will tell you they used to rake for cockles in the (Port Noarlunga) estuary down there.
“But I haven’t seen anyone digging for cockles there for probably 50 years.”
Media personality and former Crows and Sydney forward Ryan Fitzgerald is a former Cockledivers junior who has maintained his love of the club.
The club’s deep-sea diver logo is one of the best going around.
2. Willaston Donnybrooks
Footy teams named after synonyms for fights are surely a rarity.
The town of Willaston had a strong Irish contingent during the late 1800s and so club officials adopted Donnybrooks, an Irish term for a scuffle or argument, when it was formed in 1889.
“Our logo is a big, brawny footballer with one arm out and a football tucked under his other arm,” Donnybrooks secretary John Williams said.
“The story behind that it was the last thing the bloke who designed that remembered of (ex-
Willaston player) Gus Lucas running through a pack and accidentally collecting him, and knocking him out.
“Gus was an old-style, head over the ball, charge straight ahead type of thing — certainly not a ballet dancer.”
Williams said a rival club’s timekeeper once told him Willaston should consider changing its moniker to something “more family-friendly”.
“But I think if people are scared of a nickname, why would you change it?”
1. Reynella Wineflies
Reynella’s nickname features two things you probably do not expect as a club’s moniker — wine and flies.
Individually they are quirky enough but together they are better.
Add to that the club’s fun, Louie the Fly-inspired logo and Reynella’s nickname gets even more kudos.
As for the origin of Wineflies, the footy club was previously surrounded by vineyards and flies would swarm around open-top vats used in winemaking at the time.
Former SFL president Chris Leahy said Reynella players and supported adopted a tradition of drinking local Madeira wine under the club’s old grandstand on Sunday mornings during the 1950s.
“At wineries at certain times of the year a whole lot of wineflies get around the place,” Leahy said.
“They reckon the wine was so fresh (at Reynella), the flies were still flying around it so they became the Wineflies and have never changed.”
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