The rumour is that Saints are going to change the Club crest, but many feel that this would not be a good news.
Over the years Saints never really had a crest that identified them, early pictures of the team show that by around 1888 they had started to wear the county crest on their shirts and this continued for around 5 -6 seasons, however when the team switched to the red & white stripes they would be synonymous with in 1896 a badge of any kind disapeared from the shirts and would not return for nearly 80 years.
Yes the club had a crest as sorts that appeared in the club programmes etc, a badge taken from th Southampton Borough coat of arms featuring three tudor roses, but this did not appear on any of our shirts and over the years the famous stripes were always without a badge, no matter what retro shirt manufacturers would like you to believe.
In 1974 though this all changed and version one of our current crest appeared, this was the result of a competition asking supporters to design a badge and so Saints started the season back in Division Two with the new design on their shirts, simply speaking the badge combined several elements of the things that surrounded the club, starting from the top the halo reprsented the club nickname of the Saints, the ball of course the game we play, the scarf the supporters and our club colours, on the body of the badge the tree reprsents the New Forest to the west of the city and under that the sea is depicted to reflect our maritime heritage and under that the tudor rose from the City coat of arms with finally the name of the club.
I feel that this badge not only pays tribute to all aspects of our great club and city but is also a very striking symbol with its combination of both tradition and simplicity, put bluntly its a crest to be proud of and not the fanciful design of a designer trying to capture modern trends as perhaps the design of the AFC Bournemouth badge was.
Version oneof the crest featured a plain football and this survived until around 1996/97 when the club changed the design of the ball to black spots for copyright reasons..
For the past 37 years this symbol has been worn on our shirts and adorns the skin of many supporters who have had it tattoed on themselves, it is a symbol that having been so prominent on our shirts through some great times and indeed some bad times as well is recognised throughout football from afar.
So why change now ? I agree that in some respects we are going through some changes and indeed that it was a new beginning of sorts in 2009, but this football club was not founded in 2009 it was founded in 1885, players, managers, Chairmen even supporters have come and gone over the past 125 years and they will continue to so so over the next 125, but the one thing that is constant is the football club at the hub of it, in this respect it doesnt belong to any individual but the community as a whole and its its very existence is dependent on the supporters to do just that support the club, something that is easy in the good times and not so in the dark days.
When Markus Liebherr arrived at St Mary's the word from him was that he would be a "good custodian" the word owner was never mentioned, it was always "custodian" with that in mind i would hope that those running the Club will respect our traditions, yes make some new ones, but start those afresh not in place of our old ones.
Saints are in a good period at present, in truth most our recent history has been good barring a few seasons in the past half dozen years and we Saints fans have been lucky in that those of us under 60 have until recently known nothing but good times up until 2005 anyway.
But in the past 15 years i have seen the support for this club and the pride in it grow to a degree that it never had before, ther ehas never been the pride in the club and indeed the City Of Southampton amongst the supporters as there has been now, we have built that pride on things like the club crest, we have been proud to wear it across the World and in some respects its a badge of recognition that marks you out as someone special, I have spoken to complete strangers in places as far apart as Florida, New York, Italy even the Czech Republic, why have we spoken, because one or both of us saw the club crest, this is something I feel supporters of Man Utd must envy us for, they see someone wearing their club shirt or badge and chances are they will both live far apart, for us its almost like a passport.
To change it now would split the supporter base, there will of course be people that would not mind a change, but most I have spoken to want to keep the current crest and to be blunt of those who say they wouldnt mind a change around 90% say they would want us to go back to the three rose crest of old.
As the old saying goes though "If it aint broke dont fix it" change is good but not change for change sake, could you imagine a Liverpool shirt without the Liver Bird, a Arsenal Shirt without the cannon, a West ham Shirt without the hammers even dare i say it a pompey shirt without their symbol, look at all the club crests in the league, all the best ones are the traditional designs, Ok some have been modified slightly over the years but they have maintained the traditional symbols on them, the one that are open to ridicule are those that have as been mentioned previously, been produced by a designer with amodernistic approach with no feel for the club or the City it is meant to represent.
Perhaps thats why ours is so special, it was designed by someone who knew what the club and city was all about, it encompasses everything in it that it needs to, it has served us well for 37 years, it is what identifies us to people the World over, please dont change it !