Keep the Crest!
by nigel davies
This year marks the 40th anniversary of Swansea City’s first glorious foray into the top flight under John Toshack, and the club have paid homage to that golden time by introducing a new ‘retro’ club crest for the 2021/22 season…….a crest that simply has to stay for the next 40 years!!
If you’re an old timer like me then you’ll remember that 80’s Swans badge, based on the city’s coat of arms, with the swan atop the castle with the black and white stripes meeting the blue sky for the background.
Man, I’m getting shivers just typing that!
It was and always will be a powerful symbol of that glorious time under Toshack, when homegrown players like Curt, Charlo and Robbie James ripped up the established football script and tore up the First Division.
For a season.
For more than twenty years the Swans badge has been far more simplistic, with a squiggle and three lines making up an ideogram of a Swan.
The first incarnation of this, back in the Sliver Shield ownership days, was for a rather bizarre reason a maroon colour. This strange choice of colour makes a mockery of Chairman at the time Steve Hamer’s criticism of the old badge, which he slammed for featuring the blue ‘of another club’ (ignoring the fact it was representing the sky, for crying out loud!), and in his opinion the swan looked more like a goose.
Harsh criticisms from a man that signed off the maroon colour suggested to him by the commercial manager at the time, Peter Barber, who’d seen the colour on a Swansea Council sign and thought the livery was associated with the city! And no “other clubs” played in maroon did they, Steve?
No wonder the club kept getting battered in those days and ended up being sold for a quid to a chancer like Mike Lewis with that sort of business acumen in the Boardroom!
Anyway, the maroon soon gave way to a red version as that was a more “vibrant” colour apparently. Thankfully, one of the first things the Nurse/Jenkins/Dineen/Morgan/Trust regime did was to change the badge back to a traditional black and white affair.
There was the one season back in 2012 where we turned back time and went golden to celebrate the club’s 100th season, but that aside the club has been depicted by those four lines making up a stylised swan for the whole of the 21st century…
...until now!!
This season we have gone back to the circular badge with a proper swan (or a goose if your eyesight’s on a par with Steve Hamer’s) standing atop the castle with its wings outstretched. The colour scheme is all black and white with the exception of the castle and the swan’s beak which are both a shade of bronze.
Despite the colour changes the new crest immediately evokes the Toshack era badge – which will please the marketers at the club as that’s exactly what it was meant to do!
What it’s also done is capture the imagination!
Upon release the new badge was tremendously well received by fans and it continued to gain popularity with the release of the new kits and training gear.
But the new crest is only supposed to be a temporary change as a nod to that First Division anniversary.
However, I’m asking the club to reconsider that and keep this new crest.
I’m not alone in wanting to keep this throwback badge – which is good to know, as it means the club can’t just write it off as the whim of a sentimental old fool with a fanzine (although that’s exactly what I am!)
As you can see from the above images, our snap 12 hour Twitter poll showed a landslide victory for retaining the badge, whilst Jack Army member Gareth Evans has ensure the badge lives on…on his right leg!
This changed badge, and the sentiment behind it, is an example of the considerable improvement in the club’s marketing and connection with its fans through our heritage and history. It’s something that I approve of mightily and applaud the club for pulling this one off and doing it justice.
But perhaps they’ve succeeded just a little too much and now fans want to adopt the change and make it a permanent feature.
So come on Swansea City, keep the crest please!
