It's funny, Brian and I had considered whether or not to approach the team and suggest a name change.
It would be a huge expense and effort:20 playing tops, 60 t-shirts, 20 coats, team banner, van vinyls, bank account, website and domain names, etc, plus we would have to start from scratch with building up our reputation and profile again to an extent.
But expense and effort would have to be dealt with if that's what the team decided.
I expected the paintball community to mainly say 'no, keep the name' as has been the case here, because you all know we have been around for a while and have not just started a team called 'Tsunami' to cash in on the disaster in Asia. But what will Joe Bloggs on the street think? Brian and I had stopped wearing our Tsunami coats and Tshirts around town, mainly because we didn't want to cause offence or have people think we were being insensitive.
I decided to ask someone whom i thought would be impartial, a contact we have at the BBC who is responsible for publishing our match reports on the BBC website. This is what he said in response to my question 'should we change our name'
Hi
You know, fate works in strange ways. I received your report but wasn't around to do anything with it. When I got back to work, the disaster was happening. So, "Basingstoke Tsunami go to Malaysia" was never going to get published, for obvious reasons.
I was thinking about your name yesterday. Changing the name would be a possibility but by no means necessary, I would have thought. The word was in existence before. However, if it is possible to "lay low" (ie not approach sponsors and so on) for say six months that would be a good idea.
However, if you really must get moving on sponsorship and publicity in the next six months (before things quieten down again), a name change would be necessary really. I doubt a sponsor would want to be associated with that name at the moment.
Does that help? If there's anything more specific you want to ask, do go ahead. I appreciate this is a really difficult situation to be in.
Basically, if you think you can lie low for a while, do that. If not, go
for a change. My gut instinct is you should do the former. It could
happen to any team with an "exciting" name, and changing the name draws attention to it, if you see what I mean.
I don't think you're in much danger of being seen as "cashing in" if
that helps, though.
Alan
More or less what we thought too.....
As Brian said, in Malaysia people have made 'light-hearted' puns at our name, for instance: 'Did you have anything to do with what happened here? Maybe it was an omen. I hope a team called 'plague of locusts' doesn't win the Nation Cup' next year'!
I don't know what to do, it's a hard one.... One suggestion someone made to me today at work was that instead of using the Japanese term for tidal wave, 'Tsunami' we use the Japanese word for 'Peace' or 'Hope' instead. Team Daffodil does have a ring to it tho