Does anyone really know someone in particular from the Western Suburbs of Melbourne or anywhere for that matter that changed club allegiance FROM their own non- Footscray team, TO the Western Bulldogs AFTER and BECAUSE Footscray became the Western Bulldogs?

Well I always believed no-one at all who was a resident of the “Western Region” changed their support for Collingwood, Carlton, Essendon, Richmond, Geelong, Hawthorn etc to the Western Bulldogs until receiving this correspondence back in 2005.

Again what is the Western Region / Western Suburbs and where does the Western Region / Western Suburbs start and finish? When and where do the Western Region / Western Suburbs become the Eastern / Southern and Northern Region / Suburbs?

Anyhow just underneath in blue is one person that was evidently won over to the club by the name change according to her brother who dispatched this to FNWB in 2005. Here is the proof of the success of Western Bulldogs replacing Footscray according to this bloke. Nothing has been altered or changed in this email, it is exactly as he sent it, copied and pasted, containing his own particular and unique spelling and syntax.

Well Groucho Einstein isn’t this bloke’s real name I have selected that as I wasn’t sure whether he was a comedian or a genius so I adopted Groucho Einstein rather than say Albert Marx or anything else. Similar to the cricketing scenario when the fieldsman chases the ball and when returning it for a possible run out, throws it to the centre of the wicket because said fieldsman claims that he couldn’t decide whether to throw it to the bowler’s end or the keepers end.

I was going to leave out the part Groucho wrote about his job, so as not to unnecessarily identify him and his workplace, but as it was such a crucial part of his argument and it would have meant his correspondence was edited and thus not the whole story. Therefore I decided that it could NOT be left out. So only his name was changed.

So there above is one fan from the Western Suburbs / Western Region that the name change attracted to the club.

Well Western does mean something to someone and so many more although I don’t know who these ‘so many more’ are as there is no elaboration about them. As for this new breed of supporter how often does this new breed come through? Also what is this new breed of supporter and whatever they are why would a club who changed their name to a direction necessarily and automatically appeal to this ‘new breed of supporter’

Somewhat funny how Footscray having our name changed to Western Bulldogs means that we are now ‘a club of the Western Suburbs’ yet were of no or minimal appeal to the Western Suburbs prior to 1997 when we were the only team in Melbourne playing its home games in the western suburbs of Melbourne! However the new (of 1996) administration changed our name to Western and that means we really are a team of this west although the new administration decided we had to play our home games at Carlton in Melbourne’s northern suburbs. So all these people from the outer western suburbs like G.E can feel more attached to the club now on a Saturday afternoon going to the game. Yes all of them are now leaving home (or the supermarket) earlier to watch the Western Bulldogs take on West Coast or Fremantle at the Docklands than what they did when watching Footscray playing either of those two at the Whitten Oval in 1996. So when their turning from Ashley Street into Barkly Street and progressing down Barkly Street to not long before it changes its name to Dynon Road they will pass the Whitten Oval, wave to it as they go by. Then they remember how they need to fill up with petrol or they won’t have enough to get to the Docklands and back. As their filling up with fuel they all feel such happiness that they are travelling into the city rather than to West Footscray, as it reinforces to them how important it is that they now support a club that is truly ‘of the Western Suburbs’

It is funny how dummies like me haven’t picked up on it yet or still need to be reminded ‘by the way’ that it is still the Footscray Football Club trading as the Western Bulldogs? Well I feel better now, knowing that.

For some strange unexplainable reason, I assumed Footscray was gone forever. Maybe I should look harder at the footy record or the newspapers because I can only read it as Essendon v Western Bulldogs in the newspapers or in the record? Or perhaps glasses are in order when at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, and both the scoreboards proclaim – Melbourne v WB?
I just can’t hear or see Footscray anymore, is something wrong with my eyes or hearing because it is still part of the official name (Footscray Football Club Trading as Western Bulldogs) as GE points out? It sounds feasible that if Oscar Wilde could come back from the dead, he would support us because we are without doubt “The Club That Dare Not Speak Its Name’?

As for the Sims Supermarkets or whatever they are called now, am I expected to refuse to go there anymore (even if they dropped their prices) because they changed their name? Yes absolutely for sure, I should be consistent and walk (or drive if too far to walk) past there and go somewhere else and pay more on groceries and petrol to get to another shop because this supermarket has a new name. Maybe you would drive past it too and be also outraged at any and every grocery store that changes its name?

Well I am not smart enough in such esteemed company to ‘enjoy and educated argument??? Then I can’t feel free to go to that supermarket because it changed its name. Money making concerns like supermarkets changing their name really upset me more than 100 year old football clubs that have been in the family for generations.

Anyway now that the Kangaroos are North Melbourne again, I wonder what his sister thinks about her old club reverting back to North Melbourne?

Views From Other Footscray Fans

Here are the views of another aggrieved fan – So to read PJ Zee’s extract just click the link.

Sympathy Number Ron by (From chapter 25 of ‘Sympathy Number Ron) by PJ Zee

SYMPATHY NUMBER RON

Views From Other Footscray Fans – PJ Zee
(From chapter 24 of ‘Sympathy Number Ron’)

It was Saturday; time to unwind.

Time to kick up your heels.

Time to relax.

Some people spent their Saturdays taking massages to uncoil the knotted tension in their muscles and bones, and others did yoga. The serene burnt incense, lit candles, and swayed blissfully back and forth to the rhythm of meditative chants. You could try the spirit-soothing tranquillity of transcendence, the pincushion mimicry of acupuncture, or the conformity of the fashionably safe palates. Unimaginatively, you could also just sleep. But for the majority of people, the best way to unwind on a Saturday – for the most part – meant doing pretty much one thing: slumping on the couch, taking an aspirin, and sighing with relief that you now had two days in which to convalesce. That said – for the majority.

Come Saturday, and wound tight by the frustrations from their own working weeks, Ron and his friends, Neil, the ‘other’ Neil, and Mike also spent their day trying to unwind. Where other people spent their day unwinding by taking massages or doing yoga, Ron and his friends, Neil, the ‘other’ Neil, and Mike spent their day, well, I guess you could say, by doing pretty much the same: screaming diatribes at a bunch of knuckle dragging footballers (although technically, Neil – going through a phase at the moment, and sometimes moving his midweek yoga to the weekends – did both). And today, Saturday, restocked with lashings of Vortex Gold fuelled rage, armed to the teeth with an arsenal of blood curdling obscenities, and looking to drop a payload of simmering hate the first chance they’d get – well heck, they were looking to pick up from the very same expletive from where they’d malevolently left off.

Sport is one of the last remaining forums where it’s still acceptable for seemingly intelligent men to lose themselves for an afternoon and go absolutely hog wild, without fear or spectre of being institutionalised (notwithstanding that heavy metal concerts are the top dog of this realm.) Ron was having the fellas around this evening to watch their football team, Footscray, play some other mob on the tube.

Now that’s not quite correct.

Ron was having the fellas around this evening to watch their football team, the one formerly known as Footscray, play some other mob on the tube.

Some years back, no thanks to the infernal wisdom of clubs presiding administration, it was decided that in the best interests of the club’s marketability, it was necessary to re-badge Footscray as the Western Bulldogs. No matter how compelling the reasoning for this change may have been, Ron knew the unconscionable fact was, that tagged incriminatingly to the tail end of it – if you’d cared to take a look – you’d undoubtedly find the filthy, skid-mark shit stain, of a mercenary dollar sign. Mindful of this cynicism, the clubs administration postured to meet the aggrieved supporters halfway, and as a compromise suggested that the former name could still be represented in some way. This was achieved, albeit cursorily, by the placement of a miniscule ‘ffc’ (an acronym for Footscray football club), high on the back centre of the jumper. Needless to say, none of these machinations sat well with Ron. Though the media and the football community (and oh, not to mention the Marketing fucks) immediately embraced the new model (the Western fucking Bulldogs), he and his friends Neil, the ‘other’ Neil and Mike steadfastly resisted. They held their ground with the same unwavering verve as the disenfranchised PLO, and having just stopped a notch short of enacting a blood pact in doing so, still vowed that it would take nothing less than the wherewithal of a drilled army platoon to have them move. Or so it was motioned.

In the first season after the ‘think tanks’ of marketing stole – repeat: stole – his beloved football clubs name from him, Ron swore never to watch the game again. After realizing how empty his life was without it (half time – Round 1) he decreed that it was time to accept their puny tokenism and recognize the anagram they put on the back of the jumper as somewhat of an olive branch; and then with renewed enthusiasm and soaring spirits, he duly moved to reconcile himself with his beloved club. Well, it was more like changing channels on the remote and picking up where he’d left off: screaming his sorry arse at a bunch of knuckle dragging footballers. But he had something up his sleeve.

He would create his own illusory world, and snuff out all references to the new model. If asked at work whom he supported he’d say ‘Footscray’, in the proudest voice he had. When infuriated by the predictably leaden-skulled response: ‘Huh … oh you mean the Western Bulldogs’, he’d first stop to think, Jesus, these fuckers couldn’t remember a National fricken Institution, let alone the last time they had a goddamned crap, and then he’d agitatedly add, ‘Yeah like I said: Footscray’. Finding that he was expending too much rage whilst correcting people with the energy sapping terse model, he decreed to replace it with plain old generic disregard instead. Ron also adopted the peculiar practice of using whiteout to obliterate the Western Bulldogs reference in the print media, the same way despot Governments censor words when circulating propaganda. Before reading his Monday morning paper, he would ceremoniously carry out this practice and once the whiteout dried (which was another frustration) he would replace it with Footscray. This function was carried out in the review of the game, the ladder, and the scoreboards. He seldom bothered with the statistical pages; mainly because Footscray seldom had players good enough to make it on these lists, so that for the most part wasn’t a problem. Once completed, and much to his ‘when-will-this-fucker-ever-dry’ relief, he would then kick back from his desk, recline deeply into his chair, and slowly savour Footscray’s most recent … err … loss. But not before he carried out one last burdensome errand: gesturing a hateful single finger insult to all the marketing fucks that had stolen his clubs name, whilst mentally declaring ‘You can steal our clubs fucking name, but you’ll never steal our supporter’s fucking spirit’, and he’d leave it at that. Actually the truth is, he did it for a couple of weeks and then grew tired of it.

Anyway, that was just rhetoric. The ball had just been bounced and battle was about to commence.

“Oh fuck, get in there,” Mike.

“Oh fuck, get it out, get it out,” Neil.

“No fuck Jesus, get it in,” the ‘other’ Neil.

If not for the bloodthirsty hate and frenzied rage being at the very heart of these diatribes, you’d be forgiven for misinterpreting them as a very disturbing episode of sadomasochistic homo-erotica.

“Grab him, grab him … Oh fuck meeeeeeeeeeee,” the ‘other’ Neil.

“Jesus H fucking Christ, pick up the fucking ball you fucking dolt,” Neil.

“You ought to be skull fucked Croftie,” Anonymous 29.2.05.

“Kick it to stinky, kick it to stinky,” Mike.

“Yes Yes Yes … oh fuck no,” Anonymous 29.2.05.

“Chrisssssssssssssss,” all of them.

“Have a go you fruit,” Neil.

“OH FUCK,” all of them bar the ‘other’ Neil who always left early when they were losing.

Most Footscray games ended with a resigned coupling of the words ‘Oh’ and ‘fuck.’ They hadn’t won a premiership for 50 years; lost twice and much as they won; seldom got a real go in the media; seldom got a prime time Friday night fixture, and most tellingly, never got to play on the main stage on Grand Final Day (which, kind of helps to entrance bloated corporate sponsors, and therefore have money to keep your better players, and therefore, maybe, just maybe: have a God awful even chance). Truly, it was a sad mothergrating state of affairs.