Over the past weekend I sent out an ingame mail asking any and all managers 4 simple questions. What led you to choose;- Your team name
- Your team colors
- Your stadium name
- Your team logo
Chris (Gillmacs) Gillman - Beggarwood Athletic
So, here's the actually not very exciting low-down on Beggarwood Athletic.
Team name: Beggarwood is the area of Basingstoke in which I live. I usually use Beggarwood Beggars for fantasy teams and the like but I decided to pick a more English and less American second half for the name. However, I didn't want to be United as I figured that 90% of the teams out there would be xxxxx United. It was then just a matter of choosing the name that sounded best. I almost chose Alexandra after my 2nd club irl but in the end I decided that Athletic sounded the best (it's all about the aesthetics).
Colours: This is a little sad...I wanted the colours to represent my old school colours as closely as possible. The home kit of purple and white hoops is the same as my house colours. Originally I had it set up as purple with white hoops, but then I could have my away kit so I changed it to white with purple hoops. The away kit is the as close to my school kit as I could get: black with a single orange hoop. We actually had and orange hoop on each arm too but the option doesn't seem to be available.
Stadium: The Warren is named after another local area to me: "Hatch Warren". I just thought The Warren was a pretty cool name for a stadium so I went with it.
Badge: I actually stole this and then edited it, for my shame. I'm what you might say is artistically challenges, and I didn't know about the creator at the time, so I Googled BAFC to see what I could find. I found a badge similar to what I have now and then played around with trusty MS Paint to adapt it to what I wanted for my team.
Dave Wootton - Golden Lion FC
My team is Golden Lion FC.
Most people think it is a pub name - it is actually the name of my scuba diving club.
My stadium name is Alder Meadow, which is the name of my local idyllic cricket ground.
Philip Mason – Rathgael Arrows
My background info may be a bit boring but here goes anyway
Rathgael is the townland I live in. The "arrows" comes from my youth when all my imaginary teams had this name for some unknown reason. I think I just wanted something different from the usual. I even had a customised (hand painted) "subbuteo" team whose kit was a different coloured river plate strip - now my away kit. The orange home kit is reflection of the Arrows formula 1 team of the late 70's which was sponsored by Beta and was painted orange.
Stadium name is The Duck Pond for no particular reason other than an amusement for my son. It originally was named after a local park but nobody would have got the significance so I renamed it. The stands are also named for humour value: Long stand band stand etc.
Jamie Vinall – Milliontown
My team is very musically themed. The team name 'Milliontown' is also the name of one of my favourite albums by a band called Frost*. Similarly, my stadium is named 'Blackfield' which is the name of a band (and album) I also really like. I thought long and hard to think of relevant names and I like the fact I managed to eventually come up with a team name with 'town' in and a stadium with 'field' in. I always thought how cool it would be if someone recognised either of these names and struck up a conversation about them but nobody has yet - I guess there's not that many people into obscure prog rock around here!
Also my team logo - its Pearl Jam's logo for their first single - 'Alive'. It was amazing how it fitting exactly into my colour scheme as I randomly picked the black/blue combination without even knowing we had to provide a team logo!
Marky Sovereign – Sovereign City
In response to your request for info on how teams came to be, I thought I'd jump in and offer the lowdown on Sovereign City.
You will notice that there is a strong theme of royalty/ monarchy running through my team's corporate identity, and contrary to popular belief this is not because either a) I am a monarchist, or b) I am one of the lesser known heirs to the British throne masquerading in this game world in a similar manner to the story of the Prince and the Pauper! No, neither of those things are true, and couldn't be further from the truth.
The royal motif has been one that has pervaded many of my gaming and online activities for a great many years. As a 13 year old teenager, I first came up with the motif when looking for a name for myself as a budding techno-rap lyricist and performance artist. At the time, the name I developed was "Prince Marky G" and eventually started a music group called "Royalty Bites", the latter of which can be seen on the Sovereign City logo. This probably came out of my love for the WWF and in particular the Royal Rumble.
This was a project that lasted for a number of years. I was the main lyricist, lead singer and music producer for the group in the early days, utilising the Amiga 1200 Octamed Pro series of software to construct songs which would then be used to rap over in live performances. The other members of the group also had royal themed names including Prince Eric C (named after his beloved Eric Cantona), Princess Ali T (who I'm sure Sacha Baron Cohen probably sourced Ali G from) and MC Randy Cash (okay he didnt have a very royal name). From its early inception as a europop phenomena influenced by groups such as Technotronic, Snap!, 2 Unlimited and East 17, the band went through somewhat of a transformation in the mid 90s embracing the music of Green Day, Korn and Pitchshifter and morphing into nu-metal/ rap crossover.
Sadly, the music was never actually that good, and Royalty Bites failed to win a recording contract or many fans and the group split up in 1998. That however is not where the story ends for the royal motif. The name Mark Sovereign came about during Championship Manager battles at University in the late 90s, as I took on the moniker and helped Walsall achieve European Champions League success! The reason for the moniker was a wish to keep that royal theme but also to represent another newfound, though of course ill advised loves that for smoking - with 20 Sovereign my chosen brand!
Around the same time I also ventured into the world of Wrestlemania 2000 on the N64 and created a royal themed character called the Macho King Marky Marshall! Another nick that has kept to the royal theme was royalpainindabot on the Pogo website.
Associated too with royalty was the name that myself and a number of friends gave ourselves at university, "The Purple Kings". We used that moniker to indicate our chosen outfits, black suits and purple shirts, when regularly heading out on the town with one aim - pulling girls! Indeed the Purple Kings were far more successful in that aim than Royalty Bites ever were in music! Mark Sovereign also became my DJ name around this time as I launched an amateur career doing weddings, birthdays and the like. Thus, the colour purple also became a key colour in the royal motif, and is therefore represented here in the Sovereign City home kit, with the away kit gold to further represent royalty. A crown is also featured on the Sovereign City logo to further push this theme, as well as several Sovereign City sponsored competitions such as Its A Royal Knockout and Monarchy In The UK.
So there you go, thats how Sovereign City came to be!
A very big thank you to those above who have shared with us how they formed their FML identity, and to those I have yet to use (they will all be posted, I didn’t want to use them all up first time out!). If you would like to share your story, it is very very welcome. Please just send it as an in-game mail to Ben Talbott (Last Minute Wanderers) and I will include it in a future ‘Behind The Scenes – St Johns’ blog.
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