The United States has often served as a foil to New Zealand in the wake of the mass shootings at two mosques in the city of Christchurch that killed 50 people last month.
For instance, New Zealand received praise from gun control advocates in the U.S. after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her government effectively banned ban all military-style semiautomatic weapons in the country. The U.S., meanwhile, has not passed significant gun reform in recent years, despite a high number of mass shootings.
Now, that contrast has entered the sports world. New Zealand Rugby and one of the country's preeminent professional rugby clubs, the Christchurch Crusaders, are working on a name change.
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The team has been called the Crusaders since forming in 1996, with a logo featuring knights and swords. Crusaders, of course, refers to the English soldiers who fought in religious wars in the Middle East against Muslims during the medieval era. Because the man charged in last month's shootings specifically targeted Muslims, the team said in a statement it is considering a complete rebranding — or at least changing the imagery associated with the club — acknowledging that the name might be offensive to some due to its historical connotation.
Several sports teams in the U.S. have come under scrutiny for their franchise names and mascots, most notably the NFL's Washington Redskins and MLB's Cleveland Indians, whose branding has been protested for decades by people who deem it offensive to the country's indigenous population. The Indians did recently drop their logo, Chief Wahoo, a caricature of a Native American man. The Redskins have been more defiant, with franchise owner Daniel Snyder saying, "we will never change the name of the team." The Crusaders, on the other hand, said their name and logo are "no longer tenable."
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