Thanks for the many nice comments on the post a week about team culture. Anytime we are able to post pictures that tell a story about the Cup, our team or a related event the feedback is immediate and gratifying, so we will try to keep those coming.

Speaking of team culture, team members reading this post will know there is a story behind the picture below....

Every AC team ends up, sooner or later, with a "team song." Once agreed, it gets used in audio/video presentations, is played the team docks out on a race day, etc. To some degree, the team songs reflect, indeed helps shape, the "team culture."

A good example of a current team song is the South African folksong "Shosholoza" after which their team is named. It means "go forward" -- persevere in the face of a challenge -- and seems particularly apropos for a start-up AC team.

Another was Team Dennis Conner's 1995 song, "Top Gun" (theme from the movie). Not only was the movie made in San Diego, but DC knew the team needed to shoot down some high flying rivals -- both other defenders and challengers -- if we were to win the Cup. Heavier thinkers might have said DC fancied himself as Tom Cruise, but somehow one doubts that.

The choice of song is often the source of friendly debate within the team -- both serious and not so. Our current dock-out song, popular with almost all concerned, is U2's "Vertigo."

One song that was suggested, and roundly rejected, is in this morning's headlines. ("Swedish pop group ABBA's catchy "Waterloo" hit that won the European Song Contest 31 years ago has been voted the best song in the event's history by viewers across the continent.")

While the tune may be catchy, no self-respecting AC team could possibly use a song whose reprise goes:

Waterloo - I was defeated, you won the war
Waterloo - Promise to love you for ever more
Waterloo - Couldn't escape if I wanted to
Waterloo - Knowing my fate is to be with you
Waterloo - Finally facing my Waterloo

Not to mention that, in the meantime, the song has become, well, culturally iconic.

We will give the person who suggested it, a European whose formative years coincided with Abba's ascendency, and whose native language is not Englisch, the benefit of the doubt and assume he did not know the lyrics. Needless to say, he has come in for a heap of good-natured ribbing.

Lately "Waterloo" has become almost the team's anti-song -- played when someone receives one of Mark Bradford's light-hearted and hilariously funny "FITH" (don't ask) awards for making a notable bone-headed play in some aspect of his or her work for the team.

All in good fun, and always kulturally korrekt.

Not exactly the Beatles, or U2
for that matter.