The Club Crest - A Brief History
21 Aug 2011

They are everywhere. The posters on your wall, the kit you wore for P.E., your lunchbox, your coffee mug, we are each and all brought up surrounded by the badges of the clubs we love.

Perhaps it’s the liver bird, Shankly’s gates and twin eternal flames of Liverpool FC, or Prince Rupert’s Tower of Everton FC which covered your bedspread. Maybe it’s the famous ship and devil of Old Trafford, or the ‘Ubi fides ibi lux et robur’ of Tranmere Rovers which adorned your bedroom curtains. Whatever the design, whichever the club, these are symbols we hold dear as a sense of identity, allowing us to differentiate ourselves from our rivals, whilst endearing ourselves to our fellow supporters. So where did the idea come from?

The step for football clubs to adopt a coat of arms was always a logical one. With a design unique to a person, family, corporation or country, no two clubs would share the same identity, something key to the rivalry within the sport itself. Dating back to the medieval times, a coat of arms would be worn on the tunics of feudal lords and knights as a way of identifying allies from foes. Today they are used to tell team-mates from opposing players, along with the chosen colours of the club. Coats of arms were designed and selected by worthy knights to portray a sense of valour and strength, and were often passed from father to son (each time with a slight modification), to display lineage and command respect. In short, the coats of arms and badges we see today have evolved from the battle standard and military uniforms of the 12^th century.

Such is the tradition and symbolic importance of a club crest within the game of football, you would be hard pressed to find a club without one. It’s almost unthinkable now that a team should run out on a Saturday afternoon wearing a football kit without some sort of logo or badge embedded two inches above their left nipple.

AFC Bebington Athletic is no exception to the rule.

So each Saturday, when the lads run out at Levers or another field of battle, I hear you cry - what does the crest above mean?! Where did it come from?! The story is a simple one but one which deep-roots the club in the area of its conception and upbringing.

Adapted from the Borough of Bebington’s coat of arms, the badge symbolises the town itself and contains many of the same elements. The Borough’s coat of arms is clearly more elaborate than the clubs current design, which opted for a clearer, more succinct version more suited to the modern game. Designed in 1996 the club crest features the wheat sheaves of the Earldom of Chester, the future King Edward I, who himself included them into his own coat of arms. Edward played a further part in the crest design, when in 1278 as King he granted the monks of St Werburgh’s the right to hold a weekly Monday market on the site of where now stands Bromborough Cross (in the hope of inspiring commercial honesty in a sacred location). The cross appears above the wheat sheaves on the AFC Bebington Athletic crest in commemoration of this momentous occasion for the parish.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the central feature of the crest is the galleon ship due of course to the importance of Bebington and the Wirral as a key Merseyside port. The maritime history of the area is profound, in terms of jobs, trade and war the area was and still is reliant on the industry, and is an undeniable part of its identity.

Whilst the Borough’s coat of arms features a Latin motto (translated as) “The fortune of the community depends on its citizens”, the club chose not to adopt the motto in favour of the simple “AFC Bebington Athletic” it now holds.

In truth, the individual components of the badge are secondary to its symbolism and meaning.

 Players don’t kiss the badge because they like boats, or are partial to sheaves of wheat. Nor, I would suggest are they particularly passionate about the sandstone cross which sits in the middle of Bromborough village. Players don’t ‘play for the badge’ because of an arousing Latin phrase, and aren’t ‘fit to wear the shirt’ because the delicate hues within the crest clash with their complexion.

No, the coat of arms, the crest if you will, has an effect which is far greater than the sum of its parts. It symbolises unity, a common cause, pride, passion, collective toil, and the desire to achieve victory for your team-mates and personally. It stands for the history of the club, its founding fathers and the principles and locality which gives us our sense of identity and others theirs.

So when the teams line up on Saturday, they may not be wearing chainmail, or wearing tunics and holding lances, but they will each be wearing a coat of arms, just as the lord and knights of yester-year would have done.

The AFC Bebington Athletic badge may not yet be emblazoned across car stickers, pencil cases, boxer shorts or lampshades, indeed it may never. But one place the crest will always appear, where it will never fade, or hide, or die, is on those shirts each Saturday afternoon.

It’s our identity, it’s who we are for 90 minutes at least each week, and we fight for it together.