It’s been six months since the announcement that Melbourne United was the new name of the club that for the last 30 years was known as the Melbourne Tigers (80+ if you count the still continuing mother club) and the media is still having trouble getting the team’s name right.

It’s now Round 9 of the NBL season and today radio station Gold 104 called the team ‘Melbourne City’ in their news update, NBL commentators have been heard calling the team Melbourne Victory and the Melbourne Tigers and there is still plenty of rounds to go to call them the names of other Melbourne teams scattering throughout the sporting world such as the Melbourne Storm, Melbourne Demons, Melbourne Stars, Melbourne Aces, Melbourne Mustangs and the Melbourne Vixens.

To add to the confusion, Melbourne United themselves call the team in some promotional material the ‘CTI Melbourne United Ballers’ which is seen as an attempt to connect the mascot (Mr Baller) with the team name to connect with young fans and the team has also been introduced as the Ballers as they come out onto the court which makes fans and the generally curious wonder if they are the Ballers or United.

This proves that choosing United as the name was a very bad idea and there is no doubt that clubs around Australia will not be hiring the people who conducted the research that said United was a good name to replace the successful Tigers name, Tigers fans hope that when the Tigers make it back to the NBL as a separate entity they won’t be mistaken for Melbourne United.