What is a badge in any case? It’s a complicated question to answer.
Perhaps your football club’s most ubiquitous symbol is a storied, heraldic design harking back to the local coat of arms or a sleek, modern design dreamt up to look effortlessly slick emblazoned on modern sportswear.
But why is there a tree? Or a bee? Or a devil?
This week, The Athletic is breaking down the details hiding in plain sight and explaining what makes your club badge.
Nothing screams Newcastle United more than a couple of pissed-off seahorses, right?
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The club’s badge is so familiar, such an iconic fixture of the modern shirt, it’s only when you actually think about it that it seems a bit peculiar. WTF are seahorses doing there? And why the hell have they got hooves?
Magpies, yes. That would be a completely understandable animal to be on the crest. The strip is black and white, the magpie is black and white, and the team’s nickname is the Magpies.
The magpie symbolises intelligence and wit — a perfect reflection of match-day ribaldry in the Strawberry Corner a few pints in.
The magpie symbolises opportunism and illusion — AKA Allan Saint-Maximin on one of his good days.
The magpie symbolises deceit — they are the shithouses of birds. Perfect for the newly minted version of Newcastle that irritates Jurgen Klopp so much and makes Anfield jeer.
And magpies have been a feature of previous club badges, standing in front of Newcastle’s er… castle in the mid-1970s. And then again in the 1980s, beneath the arc of a downturned capital letter C, which props up a curled NUF. Now that was a beautiful, if short-lived badge, one sported here by a young Paul Gascoigne.
Nobody but nobody shouts, “Howay the seahorses.” Nobody but nobody sings, “Oh when the seahorses go marching in.” Real seahorses haven’t even got legs; they’re not marching anywhere.
Seahorses are spindly, pathetic little swimmers. Granted the ones on Newcastle’s badge look vaguely aggressive and have been given hooves, but if you’re going to go down that route, why not do it properly and give them boxing gloves or swords? And if you’re really trying to look tough, you should probably forget seahorses altogether and use bears or sharks, wielding hammers.
But then Newcastle’s badge is really Newcastle upon Tyne’s badge and a modification of the city’s coat of arms, which its football team first appropriated back in the early 1900s for their FA Cup final visits and then officially adopted 53 years ago. That might seem a little bit unadventurous (and it definitely explains why I’ve spent so long digressing about magpies), but it is also pretty perfect, with St James’ perched in the middle of this one-club town, gazing down towards the Tyne. One club, one city, joined together. United.
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“I love the fact that it’s all about Newcastle,” Howe said in his recent interview with Alan Shearer. “There are other clubs around but everything is about Newcastle. It’s a one-city club. I love that.
“The intensity I love and try to embrace. I think it’s got a brilliant feeling. I love the fact the stadium is in the centre of the city — I can see it from my house. You can see it from near enough everywhere, which means it’s a constant reminder. It’s a powerful representation of Newcastle, I think.”
When the team, the city and its people are in harmony, there is little better.
In that context, the seahorses are there — “proper crined and finned,” according to the formal description — to represent the city’s maritime heritage, which is both fair enough and gives us licence to quote Jimmy Nail…
“And this is a big, big river,
And in my heart I know it will rise again,
The river will rise again…”
Which, in turn, allows us to reference the Wor Flags display for Newcastle’s first match post-takeover…
We will rebuild. 💪
— Wor Flags 🏴🏳 (@worflags) October 17, 2021
So, fine, we’ll stick with the seahorses. Although it still doesn’t explain the hooves.
The latest version of the badge was created in 1988, but most of it still mirrors the coat of arms, with the same shape and design. There is a lion on top of the Castle Keep flying the flag of St George, England’s patron saint. And the city itself takes its name from the castle built there by Robert Curthose, William the Conqueror’s eldest son, in 1080.
Or as the official blazon puts it: “On a Wreath of the Colours a Castle as in the Arms issuant therefrom a demi Lion guardant supporting a Flagstaff Or flying therefrom a forked Pennon of the Arms of Saint George.”
Makes sense.
There are a couple of differences, with black and white stripes inside the inner shield rather than three silver castles on a red background.
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And the city’s Latin motto, Fortiter Defendit Triumphans — “Triumphing by Brave Defence” — was certainly not created by anybody who saw Kevin Keegan’s team play. Instead, it was adopted during the Civil War and probably refers to fending off the Scots. Instead of that, the badge reads “Newcastle United”, which is lacking originality but definitely accurate, unlike the hooves.
Why United? Because the club was born from the merger of Newcastle East End and Newcastle West End in 1892. What about those famous stripes? In 1893, the newly created United team wore red and white, but switched to black after kit clashes with opposition sides. Red and white stripes? Hang on, that doesn’t sound right…
(Photos: Getty Images; design: Sam Richardson)
