Another little snippet - Rugby dialect

Local team sports are great for hearing the dialect. It can be any sport, but in the case of Warrington it is rugby. We are at our most tribal when we follow, support and watch our local team play. It is the perfect opportunity to throw ourselves fully into our culture, our history, our dialect. We actively want to belong to our team and our town, and we will go to great lengths to display that belonging. We have our tribal colours (primrose and blue), we have our tribal songs, we have our tribal territory (the old Wilderspool ground and now the Halliwell-Jones stadium). It is a time when we can overlook our differences and come together as a coherent unit united against our common enemies.

This all sounds a bit dramatic, but all you have to do is go to a local game and watch and listen as we psychologically gather behind our team. For a couple of hours we openly hate the opposing team and its supporters. These supporters may well be at other times our friends, workmates, possibly even neighbours, but for the duration of the match they are enemies. You are either in or you are out; us and them!

A clear example of the dialect at work is in the common name of the team – The Wire. Since the inception of the Super League in 1996, the Warrington team has been known as the Warrington Wolves. This naming policy has far more to do with corporate branding than with the town itself, and this is reflected in the name given to the team by the supporters and inhabitants of the town – The Wire. I do not know anyone who actually refers to the team as the Wolves, and tellingly the team is referred to as "The Wire" in some places on the Warrington Wolves website.

Wire working had been established in the town in the late 18^th century and the factories of William Houghton and Nathaniel Greening provided employment for local workers. As bigger and more productive factories grew in the town, names such as John Rylands, Thomas Locker and Frederick Monks became household names in Warrington, and by the start of the 20^th century they were the main employers in the town. Wire-drawing was not the only metal-working industry in Warrington, but it was the most important, and hence the beloved local rugby team acquired the name – The Wire.

This is a perfect example of a dialect word that develops specifically in a particular location and acquires specific meaning and prestige. Wire was so important to Warrington that it came to define the town. Equally, the successful local rugby team that travelled the country and even further afield became an ambassador for the town, and as an ambassador it had to represent what the town represented – wire.

“The Wire” means something to native Warringtonians, which is lost on anyone else. This is the essence of dialect.