A three-masted vessel adorns the city’s buildings and both teams’ crests. But is it an emblem of a crime against humanity?
I got my first Manchester City football badge when I was a little boy. It was gorgeous – a golden ship in full sail on the top half of the crest, the red rose of Lancashire on the bottom half, all framed in sky blue. The ship made a huge impression. It reminded me of the Blue Peter badge and pirates. Pirates were exciting. They did as they wanted, plundered what they fancied and ruled the waves. Everybody wanted a parrot on their shoulder and a patch on their eye.
With time, the badge became soaked in nostalgia. Golden ship – first match, Colin Bell, the smell of Bovril, cigarette smoke, frozen breath, Wembley 1976, Dennis Tueart’s overhead, the romance of winning the League Cup, even if it happened only once. The badge represented the City of my childhood. Over the decades, it changed. In the 1990s, a monstrous golden eagle was introduced. It towered over the poor ship and had an unfortunate whiff of nazism about it. Thankfully, in 2016, the eagle was eradicated and the City badge returned to the reassuring certainties of the old days. The golden ship regained its prominence and the red rose returned.
