THE Magpies? Boring. Try the Gorillas. The Blues? Yawn, give me the Yabbies. And why barrack for the Tigers when you can cheer home the mighty Mudcrabs?

You don’t have to look far if you want to barrack for the Saints, Swans or Kangaroos, with country towns and suburban clubs all over the country adopting those popular nicknames.

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But where’s the fun in that?

In a celebration of true Aussie ingenuity, we’ve collected our favourite original, unique and often mystifying mascots.

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Join us on a journey to the four corners of this wide brown land in search of the best footy club nickname.

Carn the Wedgies!

LOCATION, LOCATION

Sometimes the job of coming up with a great nickname is made easy by the name of your town.

Of course Ararat are the Rats, Rosebud are the Buds and Dingley are the Dingoes. Yarrambat (north of Melbourne) and Goorambat (near Benalla) are both the Bats while the final four letters of Tyabb inspired the nickname the Yabbies for the Mornington Peninsula town. In the early 1980s, the club committee reportedly tried to change the name to the Lions, but good sense prevailed.

Fountain Gate are the Gaters, Victorian amateur club Mazenod are known as the Nodders and Rumbalara call themselves “The Rumba”.

Topping them all is Nar Nar Goon which plays in Melbourne’s south-eastern fringe, where fans can be heard yelling “Carn The Goon.”

media_camera The Tyabb Yabbies are the only club we could find with a crustacean on their jumper.

PUTTING YOUR TEAM ON THE MAP

Scratching your head for a nickname for your new footy club? Have a look around the town, or at a local map, and inspiration may strike.

Henty in the NSW Riverina is the Swampies, in honour of the nearby Doodle Cooma Swamp.

A merger of the Koondrook Tigers and Barham Magpies, twin towns on opposite sides of Murray River, created the Koondrook Barham River Raiders.

The Mitta United Mountain Men play in the Tallangatta and District League in Victoria’s high country, where foes include the Beechworth Bushrangers, named for what might now be known as “colourful local identities” in the town’s past.

In Gippsland you can find the Buchan Cavemen (there are caves there) and NSW’s Picola and District League features the Mathoura Timbercutters and somewhat mysterious Blighty Redeyes.

Congupna in the Murray Football League calls itself The Road, an adaption of the club’s original name the Congupna Road footy club.

For originality, however, it’s hard to go past the mighty Diorites. That’s the nickname of the Mines Rovers Footy Club, which plays in the Goldfields footy league in WA. Diorite is an igneous rock mined near Kalgoorlie, so there you go.

media_camera Original footy club nicknames create jobs for local graphic designers.

FUR AND FEATHERS

If in doubt, animals always make great club nicknames.

In the battle for aerial supremacy the AFL has the Eagles, Hawks, Swans, Crows and Magpies, out bush you’ll find the Pigeons (Yarrawonga), the Parrots (Leongatha), the Robins (Ulverstone in Tasmania) and the Cheltenham Rosellas.

Birchip, in Victoria’s Mallee, is home to the Mallee bull, so the local footy team is naturally called the Bulls. They play in the North Central League that also features the Wedderburn Redbacks (and, confusingly, the Donald Royal Blues and Charlton Navy Blues).

In the Top End local wildlife has also inspired footy club names, with the Darwin Buffaloes, Southern District Crocs and Pint Greenants all part of the NTFL. Green ants might not sound terrifying but try walking into a nest of them.

In Queensland the Gladstone Mudcrabs, better known as the Muddies, also have a logical explanation.

But the state is an outpost of Aussie Rules and some places are still getting the hang of things, which might explain unique names like the Mount Gravatt Vultures, the Wilston Grange Gorillas and Aspley Hornets.

media_camera Richmond fans in the AFL yell “Eat em alive”. In Mt Gravatt the catchcry is “Eat em dead”.

In Victoria the Eastern Footy League has a wideranging menagerie including the

Mooroolbark Mustangs, Chirnside Park Panthers, Lysterfield Wolves and The Basin Bears.

They sound a lot scarier than the Coolamon Grasshoppers, Eltham Collegians Turtles and Lancaster Wombats — but points for originality, guys.

Repeated mergers in the Riverina have given us the grandly titled Mangoplah Cookardinia Eastlakes United Goannas but the Mordialloc Bloodhounds now prefer to be known simply as the Bloods, a bad move in our opinion.

media_camera The stonecat is a type of catfish but that didn’t bother the designers of Frankston YCW’s logo.

HITS AND MYTHS

Real animals are too obvious for some teams, which explains the East Brighton Vampires, PHOS Cambden Phantoms, Tarneit Titans and Parkmore Pirates (sort of).

The Kew Comets don’t fit exactly in this category but we can’t think where else to put them. When their club song is “the mighty fighting Browns” they can’t complain if we’re a bit confused.

LOOK TO THE SKY

Weather also provides inspiration for some great footy nicknames including the Bundoora Park Thunderbolts and the Timbarra Tornados, who’s club song includes the great line “Playin’ hard all day, We’ll blow ’em all away”.

media_camera Some more of our favourites.

THE PAIN OF EXTINCTION

Some of the greatest team names are sadly no longer with us.

The Woodville Woodpeckers (Peckers for short) played in the SANFL before becoming the Warriors then merging with West Torrens to become the lengthy but unimaginative Woodville West Torrens Eagles.

The Devenish Barbers played in the Benalla and District League until the club folded in 2006 due to a lack of players.

The Merimbula Marlins, Northcote Brickfielders (named for a local brickworks) and the Wyndham Wedgies are all defunct (Wedgies being short for wedge-tailed eagles, but of course you knew that).

Adam Cooney’s home club Flagstaff Hill used to be called the Bushpigs, but changed its name to the Falcons in 1993.

media_camera The US has the Green Bay Packers, South Australia had the Peckers.

The VFA was home to several creative names including the Bendigo Diggers (who became the Bombers after forming an affiliation with Essendon then the Bendigo Gold before folding altogether) and the Preston Bullants (now the Northern Blues). At least the Scorpions nickname survived the change from Springvale to Casey and the Frankston Dolphins are still going strong.

Sadly the same can’t be said for the brilliantly named Western Football League side the Yarraville Villains, who merged in 2007 to become Yarraville Seddon Eagles. Earlier in Yarraville’s history they were known as the Flying Gang due to number of players in the air force.

Around the same time the awesomely titled Essendon Dreadnoughts played in VFA before sinking without a trace in 1921 in the tradition of the club’s namesake, an early 20th Century battleship.

Also no longer gracing a league ladder are the Golden Point Rice-Eaters.

Inspired by the Chinese history of the Ballarat goldfields, the team’s logo was a purple dragon breathing fire out of its nostrils. The club, which produced VFL champs Bob Davis and Percy Beames, merged in 2000 with East Ballarat Bulldogs to become East Point Kangaroos.

media_camera Shane Crawford answered an SOS from the Aldinga Sharks last year. Picture: Alex Coppel

AND THE WINNER IS ...

Two leagues stand out for originality of their club nicknames.

A unique mascot seems to be a criteria for joining the Southern Football League in South Australia, home to Reynella Wineflies (who owe their name to the vineyards in the region when the club was formed in the 1940s), the Noarlunga Shoes (named after a horseshoe bend in the Onkaparinga River) and the Port Noarlunga Cockle Divers, whose emblem is a deep sea diving helmet.

Also in the league are the Cove Cobras, Edwardstown Towns (or Townies), Marion Rams, Happy Valley Vikings, Morphett Vale Emus and the Aldinga Sharks, who attracted huge publicity last year when they sacked their coach after a 300-point loss to the Shoes.

The Wineflies theme song doesn’t mention flies, but it does reference wine (sort of) in the line “We’re a mighty bunch of fellows, and everyone’s a star, and if we’re not at football, you’ll find us at the bar”.

media_camera Things get heated in the 2014 SFL Grand Final between the Wineflies (black and white stripes) and the Shoes. Picture: Sam Wundke

The SFL would take some beating on the original names front, but it might have a match in Tasmania’s Old Scholars Football Association.

The league, based in Hobart, is awesome in its total randomness. It’s as if they have never heard of sporting nicknames before and just wrote down the first thing they thought of.

Two teams in the eight-team league are both called the Saints (Channel-Tassal and St Virgils Old Scholars), Tasmania University is known as the Rainbows — or to quote the club logo, the totally not fear-inducing “rampant Rainbows” — and the Old Hobartians go by the nickname The Ships.

To top it off the team from Richmond is called the Blues in an affront to supporters of the AFL club of the same name.

Special mention also to the Victorian Women’s Football League which boasts among its ranks the Brunswick Renegades, Pascoe Vale Panthers, Airport West Westies and the MUGARS — an acronym of the Melbourne Uni Girls Aussie Rules Side.

@superfooty Tarpeena Canaries, Glencoe Murphies, Mt Burr Mosquitoes all MSEFL in SA. — Corey Patten (@Corey_Patten) February 5, 2015

@al_superfooty @superfooty Back in the day we were known as 'The Villagers'! — Williamstown FC (@WilliamstownFC) February 5, 2015