The badge

Cod Almighty | Article

by Paul Thundercliffe

9 January 2022

Paul asks: why does the Mariners' classic, beautiful badge need a makeover?

When I was a kid, I was a doodler, liking nothing better than to practice my autograph or draw that "house with a box" without the pen leaving the paper or going over a line. The other thing I used to draw voraciously was the Town badge. I must have drawn that thing 100 times a week. Small, big, detailed - I could basically draw it with my eyes closed.

What I never did was change it. Never, not one bit. It always had the fish and the boat and the pendant bits. Always had the stripes and the name of my team. Unlike designing football kits which were always different, badges were sacrosanct, and none more so than the Town one.

Why change or tamper with something so beautiful? It is one of the best football badges out there, a stone-cold classic. Want to sum up a community in one emblem? That's it.

The reason, like the badge, is strikingly obvious. Why change or tamper with something so beautiful? It is one of the best football badges out there, in the same class as the Forest or Southampton badges. A stone-cold classic. Want to sum up a community in one emblem? That's it. The black, the white, the stripes, the flashes of red, and the nod to our heritage. Perfection.

Every time you see that badge pride, love and belonging surges through you like John Cockerill in the early 1990s. It is our identity, worn on hats and scarves and coats and shirts and shorts. Wallets and pencil cases and socks and ties. You see that badge and you feel at home.

The storm of the past week is not an anti-ownership agenda, not a "happy-clapper" situation but the simple truth among many fans that you don't try and fix something that isn't broken. Nobody - apart from one designer maybe - thought that the Town badge needed a makeover. It is sublime left all on its own.

By all means, digitise the hell out of it, but even that smells a little bit like three fish. The Town badge has been manipulated for years. Back in 2006 it erupted onto the screen after Gary Jones scored against Lincoln

If Sky could do it then without adding a flag, then I'm pretty sure somebody can do it now.

This is about protecting the heart of the club. It should not be a vanity project on the whim of a bored Town fan. The outcry shouldn't have anything to do with league position or anything personal either. I would feel exactly the same if we were top of some stupid super league.

I'm OK with change, I'm sure the new regime will get a lot of things right and we will be back competing in the Football League before too long. But that badge is too important, too superbly crafted, too indelible to tamper with.

Bring on the the training ground, the scotch eggs and the transparency. Monetise and digitise and bring Town kicking and fighting into the social media revolution. But please - please - don't mess with the badge.

Rich Lyons - the designer behind the badge makeover - has issued a blogpost explaining the reason for the changes, and the club are now inviting you to have your own say on the badge with a poll running until 15 January.