Dearg is bán

Using one overused chant is, if anything, even more of a reason not to adopt another. Especially this one. When you hear fans of teams like Crystal Palace singing about being "by far the greatest team the world has ever seen" you realise how ridiculous the chant is.

No. I'd rather we sign the 'Maltese Messi' and go 19 matches without a win instead of signing players from the best leagues in the world. How quickly people forget. Imagine if a year ago someone said we'd have David Villa for 10 matches this season!

I'm quietly confident it'll be the latter. Would make sense. I can imagine they'll want A-League teams to be given matches as close to the start of the league season as possible.

I don't think the date is set yet. Will be one of 29th of July, 5th of August or 12th of August.

So we're at home.

A chant only surpassed in greatness by this thread.

It's one of the most overused chants ever.

Just reading back through this thread and I still think something with 1847 would work well and stand out compared to the other active groups in the league. Not sure if it works by itself though or needs something else (like another word). Something along the lines of: 1847 Ultras Ultras 1847 1847 Brigade 1847 Fanatics Terrace 1847 1847 Stockade Anyone got any ideas for other words 1847 could go with? Personally I think 1847 is a lot stronger than just 47. I also don't think we need Melbourne in the name but obviously open to suggestions.

What about requesting the heart outline, like the little ones on the badge, on the back of the collar instead of MHFC. Or maybe the Heart logo. A lot of teams have something there. Ajax had their previous crests on a shirt of theirs before:

At this stage last year it was less than 1600 (it was 1598 on the 26th. It's the 25th today). We're currently on 2751. Over a 70% increase.

I agree with you on the first part but the second part imo you have it wrong. Your so called Hooligan Firm names are what attract the younger generation that will stand and sing the terrace in the next 20 years. Having a Macedonian background I've grown up with this 'hooligan firm' support style, I mean look at RBB & NT. Why do they have numbers? Because the active support style which reflects to your idea of 'hooligan firm/s' attracts people to attend, sing and do whatever a terrace does on game day. I'm not saying we need to be 'ultras' or 'hooligans' but adapt to that style of active support (for example over-head clapping, western european & balkan style chants etc)....why? Because i cannot emphasise how much it works. The 'RBB' adapted to this style and it's proven that it works, in their first season they tripled in numbers compared to what Yarraside (no offence) were getting in games. Which leads to my point... why not have a name like 'Yarra City Service'? The first step to developing into a proper terrace is to pick the right name. 'Yarraside' was perfect for this but we didn't adapt your so called 'Hooligan Firm' style of terrace and even 'Melbourne47' this shits all over 'HeartLand' and prevents us from ending up like the 'Marinators'. I was talking about the name. I never said we shouldn't have overhead clapping or western european & balkan style chants. We should definitely have these. When I say I don't think we should have a name that sounds like a hooligan firm, I don't mean that we shouldn't have Ultra style support. This is exactly what I was getting at, and what I think we should avoid.

It's going to take a lot of work to grow the new terrace and, as well as winning over existing active members, we will need to be attracting new members to the active support. To that end there are two things that I really think the name should avoid. The first is anything that has too strong a connection to Man City (e.g. the Citizens) as the vast majority of football fans in Melbourne don't seem to support them. The second is anything too Green Street/Ross Kemp (e.g. Yarra City Service or Swan Street Elite). This should be a terrace for all of our active support to get behind the team, not a hooligan firm. Names like that will put people off joining us and will just be asking for negative treatment from the media.

I would imagine that if Sydney are looking at Cahill then we probably are too. Wonder if him being from Sydney will have much of an effect on the situation. If he is considering the A-League, he may want to move 'home' rather than to Melbourne.

Wasn't aware of that. It does link in nicely with a team called the Rebels, so makes sense.

Possibly true, but "Melbourne City Football Club" is not as general, and isn't that what's being argued over, rather than just "Melbourne City"?

I quite like The Heartland. Simply using 'The Heart' was one that occurred to me too (as well as a few others it seems), and I think it would be good to include a reference to Heart, but this does come down to what someone mentioned about whether we want the new group to be more of a Melbourne City group or a continuation of sorts of the last few years. Personally I'd rather it be more of a continuation, using red & white (either predominantly or with the new home colours), keeping some chants (e.g. 'We are Melbourne...', 'You are in my heart...'), and, ideally, keeping some banners as well. As we all know, a lot of people have built up a strong connection with these and I think we have the opportunity to take up where Yarraside left off, continue their great work, and support our club in the most positive way possible. FWIW, here was the list I had after a little bit of brainstorming: Heart of Melbourne The Heart 1847 (year Melbourne was given city status) The Stockade Melburnians The 1847 Brigade The Red Cross (a fairly obvious issue with this one) 1847 Crew Some better than others obviously, but thought I might as well share them anyway.

Definitely considering making the trip. A question for those more familiar with Ballarat: Do you think getting back to the train station for the 21:19 train would be a problem? Are there buses at that time or anything?

Put this together last week for my own iPhone 4 lockscreen. Pretty basic but thought I'd share it anyway.

I definitely like it, but it does seem strange to have 'MCFC' as well as 'Melbourne City Football Club' on it. The hearts are a great touch, and I love the font used (Gotham). I also think it's great that the Melbourne flag was incorporated into it, and I'd like to think this is a nod to the fans using the flag for the last few years. The 4 redrawn icons work well, and it's clever and quite subtle to use the ship from the Man City crest (even though I'm not a Man City fan. The opposite in fact). I wouldn't have put the crown on it, even though I know it's on the Melbourne flag, but that's more to do with my personal opinion of the monarchy than anything else. Overall it does have a great 'traditional' football crest feel to it.

Victory had 22,591 in 07/08. AFAIK that's the highest in any season. Last season they had 22,021, which I think was the highest that season too. Ours was 7,315 last season, so a long way off having the highest figures in the league. As some others have suggested, 10,000 would be brilliant for the upcoming season.

Surely they don't count pet 'memberships' in their tally, do they?!

I wanted to have a look at how many memberships other A-League clubs had sold so far but we're the only one with a counter (so far anyway). Interestingly, half of the teams, including the visitors, haven't even started selling theirs yet. Just seems to be us, Brisbane, Sydney FC, Wellington and Perth. Great to see how organised we are this year. Also wtf is this about: http://www.ccmariners-memberships.com.au/membership-packag/pet-membership/

Duff should be number 11 I'd imagine. He wore 16 at Fulham, but 11 at Blackburn, Chelsea, Newcastle and usually for Ireland.

In and booked.

Sent the club an email about this earlier. Pandoora! VIC 9092 is Manchester, I think.