SA Footy

This week's Guardian Messenger featured a number of stories about the Marion Rams, who are struggling to find players to field senior teams. See for example:

http://guardian-messenger.whereilive.co ... er-crisis/

The following snippet caught my attention:
The club, which began as the Sturt Football Club in 1891, joined the SFL in 1987 and won its only premiership in the competition in 2000.
Elsewhere in the printed edition it claimed that the club became the Rams (and presumably Marion, I am too lazy to fish the paper out of the recycling bin where Mrs Pseudo has already buried it) some time in the '50s.

So which club was first known as Sturt - the one named after the suburb or the one named after the electorate? Was there ever any issue which arose between the two clubs over the use of the name Sturt?

Being interested in history, like me, is not the same as being an historian, but I am prepared to say I've never heard of this other Sturt FC and would suggest that they changed their name before the real Sturt came into being.

As to the references to being named after the suburb and the electorate, I'll stick my neck out here and suggest that neither club was named in this way. Back in 1891, Marion was a small, isolated country village on the banks of the Sturt River, which is much more likely to have given its name to their football club. The suburb of Sturt almost certainly came into being after WWII (it definitely did not exist as recently as 1937), and if it was their responsibility to name the suburb, I don't think it was that helpful of the Marion Council to label it as such. Perhaps the council thought they'd bask in reflected glory.

The Sturt FC that we all know and some of us love was named after the Sturt Cricket Club which had come into being a few years earlier. It could just as easily have been known as the Unley Football Club, but the 'founding father' of the clubs was firm that the football club should have the same name as the cricket club. I don't know if Unley was in a state electorate called Sturt in the 1890s or not (it's possible given the determination to use the name), but the current Commonwealth electorate of Sturt did not come into being until 1949.

Formed: 1891 as Sturt Football Club; changed name to Sturt Marion in 1900, and later in the 50's to Marion.

baggy8 wrote:Being interested in history, like me, is not the same as being an historian, but I am prepared to say I've never heard of this other Sturt FC and would suggest that they changed their name before the real Sturt came into being.

smithy wrote:Formed: 1891 as Sturt Football Club; changed name to Sturt Marion in 1900, and later in the 50's to Marion.

Wouldnt this make Marion the real Sturt then?

mickey wrote:Wouldnt this make Marion the real Sturt then?

As a Port supporter, you'd know that the club that formed later is the real club.

smithy wrote:Formed: 1891 as Sturt Football Club; changed name to Sturt Marion in 1900, and later in the 50's to Marion.

Cheers smithy.

When was Sturt (the one named after the cricket club named after the electorate, thankyou baggy ) formed? I know it first competed in league ranks in 1901, but how long did it exist prior to this?

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=26463&start=0

I brought up this exact issue previously as per link...

smithy wrote:Formed: 1891 as Sturt Football Club; changed name to Sturt Marion in 1900, and later in the 50's to Marion.

Thanks smithy; I vaguely remember the term Sturt Marion now. Do you know if it applied to any other clubs/groups of that area?

Pseudo wrote:When was Sturt (the one named after the cricket club named after the electorate, thankyou baggy ) formed? I know it first competed in league ranks in 1901, but how long did it exist prior to this?

Hardly at all, Sturt FC was formed on March 7, a little less than two months before its first game.

White Line Fever wrote:I brought up this exact issue previously as per link...

Thanks wlf, but that piece from the Marion FC makes no mention of the key fact that smithy brought up "changed name to Sturt Marion in 1900".

smithy wrote:Formed: 1891 as Sturt Football Club; changed name to Sturt Marion in 1900, and later in the 50's to Marion.

Not that long after John Wayne changed his name FROM Marion.