Auckland FC needs an anthem. I've found it.

Stop playing 'Bliss' and play this instead. Plus, Homegrown's shock move. And many more headlines in a stacked news week...

Shirts are selling as fast as they can stitch them. Fans turn up for home games dressed head-to-toe in the team strip of black-and-blue. On game days, the home ground is rammed full of supporters chanting at the top of their lungs. They’re packed into stands, corporate boxes and the supporters zone, where fans chant, “Wanker! Wanker!” if they think the ref’s got it wrong. Which is often.

If you’re a resident of Tāmaki Makaurau right now, you cannot miss the buzz surrounding their brand new football team. As I write this, Auckland FC is top of the table after Saturday night’s clash against Melbourne City. It happened at Go Media Stadium, the football team’s home “fortress”, a venue the The Spinoff recently labelled “the most electrifying Auckland destination of 2024”.

If you’re not a football fan, my apologies for what must seem like a strange detour in today’s newsletter. We’ll get there, promise. But first, an explanation: my 14-year-old son is absolutely mad about football. By default, I am too. So we were there on Saturday night, complaining about the ref, gossiping about tactics, and leaping out of our seats at every single one of the night’s three goals.

Honestly? A very fun night out.

Auckland FC has all the right ingredients: points on the board, form on their side, an overheated rivalry with Wellington Phoenix to obsess over and diehard fans in the supporters area singing and chanting at every game. Just one crucial thing is missing: an anthem, an instantly identifiable singalong that reverberates around the ground at every game, a song that everyone instantly connects with Auckland FC.

Every great team has one. Melbourne Victory’s is ‘Seven Nation Army’. Coventry City’s is ‘Twist and Shout’. The English football team’s is ‘Sweet Caroline’. A bunch of American football teams have co-opted Creed’s ‘Higher’. The America’s Cup has ‘Loyal’. The Barmy Army’s boring but efficient “barmy army”. The Black Caps’ “young guns” phase (yes, I’m that old).

At Saturday’s 3-0 drubbing of Melbourne City, Auckland FC rolled out all the tried-and-true staples: Th’ Dudes’ ‘Bliss’, Twenty One Pilots’ ‘Next Semester,’ The Killers’ ‘Mr Brightside’. They didn’t work. Those songs are either overplayed, associated with something else, or not from here. We’ve either heard them far too often, or they don’t have anything to do with us. None of them were The Song.

I spent far too much time on Sunday trying to work out what this magic number could be. Auckland FC shares a home ground with the Big Day Out, so I went through all the old line-ups, looking at all the New Zealand bands that had played, trying to find a song that might work. I considered Betchadupa’s ‘Move Over’ (too obscure), Concord Dawn’s ‘Don’t Tell Me’ (too fast), The Tutts’ ‘K’ (already claimed by C4), Tadpole’s ‘Number 1’ (too dated), ‘Shihad’s ‘Home Again’ (too well worn), and Savage’s ‘Swing’ (too off topic).

They’re all great songs. But they didn’t work as sporting anthems. The lyrics didn’t fit a sporting context. I was about to give up when I got to the 2010 Big Day Out. There they were, Midnight Youth, a short-lived but mighty rock act that blew up big then dissolved after two albums together. They wrote catchy anthems. Their singer is a former sports journalist. Surely they’d have a song that might work?

They do.

It’s perfect.

It’s called ‘Cavalry’. Its lyrics are aptly sporting related. It’s easy to sing along to. It’s time to put your money where your mouth is today. It’s so simple you can pick it up after one listen. It’s catchy. The swelling guitar riffs still sound gigantic. I can already imagine it rattling around Go Media Stadium. It already has: the band confirmed to me that they opened both of their Big Day Out performances with that exact song.

I played this to my son and he nodded his head in approval. He pointed out something I hadn’t spotted: Midnight Youth’s song nods at epic battles during medieval times. Go Media Stadium is nicknamed Auckland FC’s “fortress”. Plus, the team has its own nickname: “The black knights.” It’s like Midnight Youth wrote it just for them! (They definitely didn’t; it came out in 2009).

My son agrees ‘Cavalry’ works. I asked a local sports journalist and he agreed, calling it “a banger.” Even Midnight Youth’s singer Jeremy Redmore says it works. “When I look back I think the sports journo in me snuck into the lyrics on quite a few of the Midnight Youth songs,” he tells me. He’s in Scandinavia making children’s music now, and but he makes frequent trips home. (A long-planned Midnight Youth reunion to open for My Chemical Romance in 2020 was postponed so long they couldn’t do it; they were replaced by Goodnight Nurse.)

This is the song! Please, do me a favour: take a moment out of your day to email Auckland FC. Tell them they need an anthem, that it needs to be ‘Cavalry,’ that if they start playing this at every home game from now on, it will catch on, it will take off, and it will become their anthem. Perhaps we can even persuade Midnight Youth to perform it at an upcoming game. (The band’s members are scattered all over the world now, but Redmore tells me: “Anything can happen.”)

I’ve already done it. I’ve spammed the team’s inbox.

If you agree this is The Song then drop them a line here. Let’s make this happen. (Yes, I’m trying to distract myself from every other terrible thing going on in the world, but if you’ve got a better idea, I’d love to hear it.)

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