Post by hendo on Apr 5, 2020 8:06:04 GMT
Club Badges and Mottos
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A shiny new metal club badge has recently gone on sale (buy early to avoid the Christmas rush) so it seems an appropriate time to examine what makes for a good design and a decent motto for a football club.
I make no secret of the fact that I dislike our current incarnation. The crest is too complicated, unmemorable, old-fashioned, and doesn’t work when shrunk down and used on merchandise.
In fact I believe that the only way for the stitching to be achieved on the beanie hats was to employ seamstresses whose other jobs included engraving the complete works of Shakespeare on a pinhead.
It incorporates the Town of Godalming’s crest itself, but it is interesting to see that, on their website, the Council now prefers to offer a more modern illustration of the famous Godalming ‘pepperpot’ as their logo and has relegated the old atrocity to its dark digital depths.
However, just in case you’re ever down the pub again chatting about this and that and someone asks if anyone knows the meaning of the Godalming badge, here is the official description:
‘A Woolpack Argent on a Chief of the last, a Rose of the first barbed and seed proper between two Escocheons also Gules that on the dexter charged with a Fesse dancetty between two Crosses patty in pale of the third and that on the sinister charged with three Pears in bend leafed and slipped proper’.
All obvious of course but there’s more…
‘On a Wreath of the Colours a Mount thereon a Ram statant holding in the mouth a Pear leafed and slipped all proper suspended from the neck by a Ribbon Gules an Escocheon Or charged with a Pair of Shears erect points upwards also proper.’
..which I think will clear things up nicely for everyone and guarantee to clear the bar.
I’m not aware that we actually have our own motto, but I assume that if we did, it wouldn’t be the town’s ‘Faithful because free’ as that has absolutely no relevance to football whatsoever and is complete bollocks anyway.
Looking around the leagues and replica kits, there are plenty of fine well-known badges and inspirational mottos proudly on display, although to be fair, there are just as many less famous and inexplicable ones.
Ghana’s Asante Kotoko Sporting Club has a porcupine on the badge and a motto of ‘Kill a thousand and a thousand more will come’.
Glasgow Rangers must have spent months burning the midnight oil utilising Scotland’s best brains before they finally emerged, blinking into the daylight, proud but exhausted, to announce their new club motto: ‘Ready’.
Gillingham’s motto is ‘The home of shouting men’ (they are not from Surrey) and Bristol City’s Latin inscription translates as ‘Promotes your inner power’ which sounds like an ad for Red Bull or Gaviscon Extra.
Sampdoria’s badge has a silhouette of a dog wearing a hat and smoking a pipe. SC Faetano in San Marino has a tree kicking a ball and Feni SC of Bangladesh’s crest has a representation of a coaching board complete with their team tactics clearly laid out with white arrows and crosses.
Tot SC of Thailand’s badge has a laurel wreath with a motto that brings a tear to the eye and a surge of adrenaline. It reads ‘Hello’.
Asa Targus Mures of Romania has gone for that old favourite of a sword sticking into a bear’s head, Free State Stars of South Africa has a traffic cone brandishing a club and Wycombe Wanderers has a swan that appears to be straining to pass a large gold chain.
AS Marsa of Tunisia’s badge sports a camel jauntily wearing a team shirt and, rather worryingly, Kugsak-45 of Iceland has a pair of fishermen hugging a seal in a very affectionate, and mildly inappropriate, manner… But then, there’s not a lot to do in Iceland in the winter months.
My favourite? The badge of FC Show of Norway which proudly displays an illustration of an unbelievably camp waiter, one hand on hip, the other holding a silver tray. Frankly no words of mine can do it justice.
Meanwhile, if Godalming do need a motto, I’m a big fan of the Oregon Ducks college football team’s simple maxim: ‘Do Something’.
A shiny new metal club badge has recently gone on sale (buy early to avoid the Christmas rush) so it seems an appropriate time to examine what makes for a good design and a decent motto for a football club.
I make no secret of the fact that I dislike our current incarnation. The crest is too complicated, unmemorable, old-fashioned, and doesn’t work when shrunk down and used on merchandise.
In fact I believe that the only way for the stitching to be achieved on the beanie hats was to employ seamstresses whose other jobs included engraving the complete works of Shakespeare on a pinhead.
It incorporates the Town of Godalming’s crest itself, but it is interesting to see that, on their website, the Council now prefers to offer a more modern illustration of the famous Godalming ‘pepperpot’ as their logo and has relegated the old atrocity to its dark digital depths.
However, just in case you’re ever down the pub again chatting about this and that and someone asks if anyone knows the meaning of the Godalming badge, here is the official description:
‘A Woolpack Argent on a Chief of the last, a Rose of the first barbed and seed proper between two Escocheons also Gules that on the dexter charged with a Fesse dancetty between two Crosses patty in pale of the third and that on the sinister charged with three Pears in bend leafed and slipped proper’.
All obvious of course but there’s more…
‘On a Wreath of the Colours a Mount thereon a Ram statant holding in the mouth a Pear leafed and slipped all proper suspended from the neck by a Ribbon Gules an Escocheon Or charged with a Pair of Shears erect points upwards also proper.’
..which I think will clear things up nicely for everyone and guarantee to clear the bar.
I’m not aware that we actually have our own motto, but I assume that if we did, it wouldn’t be the town’s ‘Faithful because free’ as that has absolutely no relevance to football whatsoever and is complete bollocks anyway.
Looking around the leagues and replica kits, there are plenty of fine well-known badges and inspirational mottos proudly on display, although to be fair, there are just as many less famous and inexplicable ones.
Ghana’s Asante Kotoko Sporting Club has a porcupine on the badge and a motto of ‘Kill a thousand and a thousand more will come’.
Glasgow Rangers must have spent months burning the midnight oil utilising Scotland’s best brains before they finally emerged, blinking into the daylight, proud but exhausted, to announce their new club motto: ‘Ready’.
Gillingham’s motto is ‘The home of shouting men’ (they are not from Surrey) and Bristol City’s Latin inscription translates as ‘Promotes your inner power’ which sounds like an ad for Red Bull or Gaviscon Extra.
Sampdoria’s badge has a silhouette of a dog wearing a hat and smoking a pipe. SC Faetano in San Marino has a tree kicking a ball and Feni SC of Bangladesh’s crest has a representation of a coaching board complete with their team tactics clearly laid out with white arrows and crosses.
Tot SC of Thailand’s badge has a laurel wreath with a motto that brings a tear to the eye and a surge of adrenaline. It reads ‘Hello’.
Asa Targus Mures of Romania has gone for that old favourite of a sword sticking into a bear’s head, Free State Stars of South Africa has a traffic cone brandishing a club and Wycombe Wanderers has a swan that appears to be straining to pass a large gold chain.
AS Marsa of Tunisia’s badge sports a camel jauntily wearing a team shirt and, rather worryingly, Kugsak-45 of Iceland has a pair of fishermen hugging a seal in a very affectionate, and mildly inappropriate, manner… But then, there’s not a lot to do in Iceland in the winter months.
My favourite? The badge of FC Show of Norway which proudly displays an illustration of an unbelievably camp waiter, one hand on hip, the other holding a silver tray. Frankly no words of mine can do it justice.
Meanwhile, if Godalming do need a motto, I’m a big fan of the Oregon Ducks college football team’s simple maxim: ‘Do Something’.