Ando’s Shout: The weird and wonderful nicknames of the sporting world
Who are the players known only as their nickname - a name that will stick with them even beyond their football career? Jon Anderson takes a look at the best nicknames in footy.
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It was on a hallowed football field at Kilmore’s Assumption College that Peter Patrick Pious Paul Keenan became “Crackers” for life.
A 13-year-old Year 9 boarder from his family farm at Wilby near Yarrawonga, the hyperactive Keenan longed for the opportunity to let off some steam playing football.
Any form of fighting was strictly banned under the learned eye of Brother Dominus, so Keenan invented his own form of retribution.
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“It used to get pretty wet up there in winter and the ball would get very wet and soggy, so when I had an argument with my opponent I kicked the ball as hard as I could into him,” said Keenan, 72, who went on to play 213 games with Melbourne, North Melbourne and Essendon.
“Brother Dominus, who was a great man, couldn’t believe what I had done before saying, ‘You’re crackers, Keenan,” Keenan said.
“And I have been ‘Crackers’ ever since to everybody bar my family, friend Harry White and 1975 North Melbourne premiership captain Barry Davis.
“Barry thought ‘Crackers’ was a terrible name but it has never worried me, in fact it probably worked to my advantage in both football and afterwards in the media world.”
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‘WHALE’ OF A TIME AT THE SPORTING PUB
After an impressive football career with Richmond and South Melbourne, Brian Roberts took over the Cricket Club Hotel in Clarendon St, South Melbourne.
Just as The Emerald Hotel is today, the Cricket Club became Melbourne’s sporting pub of choice, where you could bump into anyone from Keith Miller to Laurie Nash as they had “an ale with the Whale”.
Naturally the Whale is first ruck in today’s Team of Nicknames that involve animals, insects and birds, one that includes 1933 Brownlow medallist Wilfred “Chicken” Smallhorn.
After 150 games for Fitzroy, “Chicken”, so named because his mother could never catch him when he was young, enlisted in 1940 and was taken prisoner by the Japanese. He was sent to Changi after having toiled on the Burma Railway.
It was in Changi that Smallhorn became a life-changer when he organised a six-team Australian rules competition that included the Changi Brownlow won by “St Kilda’s” Peter Chitty. The Grand final between Victoria and the Rest of Australia attracted an estimated 10,000 spectators.
Smallhorn, who in the 1960s was a regular television football panellist, married Violet Burn in 1940 and was at war when their son, Robert, was born. When Smallhorn returned to Melbourne his son was four. Tragically, 10 years later Robert died from cancer.
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WHO IS HAROLD MANN?
For virtually all of his 79 years, Harold Mann has exclusively answered to “Hassa”.
The nickname was bestowed by his cousin Len up at Rutherglen in the early 1940 as Len struggled to get his tongue around saying “Harold”.
“Hassa” was the best he could do and Hassa it has been ever since, to the stage where you would be no good thing to get Mann to turn around in a crowded room if you yelled out Harold.
The rest of the AFL players in this group of nicknames are in exactly the same boat, where they are rarely called anything but their nickname
WHY PORT OPPONENTS WERE IN ‘GRAVE DANGER’
David Granger made his name in the SANFL with Port Adelaide, although he did play three VFL games in 1979 when recruited by St Kilda.
He played in an era where violence was sadly the norm, and few were more violent than Granger, hence his nickname of “Grave Danger”.
Not all football brawlers were given brutal nicknames, such as Hawthorn’s Des Dickson who was ironically called “Delicate Des”, when in essence the softest part of Dickson were his back teeth.
“Lethal Leigh” Matthews was a Lou Richards invention, one that Leigh’s mother never approved of but one that many opponents could all too readily attest.
NORM TOOK NO PRISONERS
Norman Hunter, who died last month from COVID-19, is fondly remembered as an extremely hard-tackling centre-half in the glory days of Leeds United from 1968-75.
He took no prisoners did Norman, hence the well deserved nickname of “Bites Yer Legs”.
Raised by his mother Betty in Gateshead, the story goes that she was speaking over the fence to a neighbour one day and mentioned that “my Norman came home with a broken leg on Saturday”.
“Whose was it?” asked the neighbour.
As for ever popular English fast bowler Gladstone Small, he was dubbed “Manos” during a stint with South Australia, Manos being a poultry farm that advertised chickens which were “All meat, no neck”.
Stephanie LaMotta is the daughter of boxer Jake LaMotta and Dimitria, who was the fourth of his six wives. When Stephanie hit the club scene in London during the ’70s, the tabloids quickly dubbed her “The Raging Heifer”, given Jake LaMotta fought as “The Raging Bull”.
MORE NICKNAMES:
Countdown the best VFL-AFL nicknames and find out the interesting stories behind them
Why Jack Billings is ‘Latte’, Jack Steven is ‘Stuv’ and other nicknames for Jacks at St Kilda
Australia’s best footy club nicknames including the Yabbies, Rainbows and Shoes
Top draft picks given new nicknames at AFL clubs
HOT
MARVELLOUS MARVIN HAGLER
You need to be good to add Marvellous to your legal name. He was.
MAGIC JOHNSON
Much of what Earvin Johnson did on the basketball court was indeed magical.
THE GREAT ONE
Has there ever been a more dominant player in their sport than ice hockey’s Wayne Gretzky?
NOT
ERIC THE EEL
Eric Moussambani was so named after he just managed to complete the 100m Olympic freestyle in Sydney.
EDDIE THE EAGLE
The nickname was facetiously based on his ski-jumping ineptitude.
SANDS OF NAKAJIMA
What the Road Hole bunker became after Tommy Nakajima took four to escape it in the 1978 British Open.
EVEN MORE NICKNAMES:
What your footy team was once called and how it got its name
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