Posted June 16, 2015

For season 2015/16, a special commemorative edition of the club’s badge is to be worn on the jerseys of Cowdenbeath FC. 

 

The Cowdenbeath club crest/ badge has its origins in the late 1950’s.  Back then, the club’s players were involved in its creation as they wished to sport a club crest on their club blazers.  The players designed it with the help of the late Dave Mason who undertook the leading role with the artwork.  Dave Mason was for so long the club announcer and then had a stint as Cowden’s programme editor from 1968.  Back in the 1950’s, his cartoons used to illustrate the tales of Cowden games in the Cowdenbeath Advertiser.

 

The familiar present day version of the club crest comprises a shield divided into 4 quadrants with a diagonal Cowdenbeath FC legend emblazoned on a panel in the foreground.  The four quadrants feature from top left in clockwise fashion – the Scottish lion rampant; thistles - also emblematic of Scotland; a football representing the game; and the crosses of the crucifixion. 

 

This has been the version of the club crest in use since 1970.  The club crest previously had some other elements that were dropped in the 1970 revamp.  Our original club crest took great pride in the mining roots of Cowdenbeath FC – a club formed by local miners.  On the original crest, depicted on the top of the shield, was a pit winding wheel flanked by 2 crossed picks and shovels emblematic of the mining industry.  Of course by 1970, there were no pits left in Cowdenbeath hence these elements were removed. 

 

However, the club has decided that ‘the Miners’ version of the club badge should be revived in 2015 in order to commemorate:

 

·      That 2015 is the Centenary of Cowdenbeath FC winning the Scottish League 2^nd Division Championship in two successive seasons. 
 

·      The players in the double title winning team who served in the Great War.  The first two players to enlist in 1914 were winger Pat Neilson and centre half Willie Birrell.  Pat Neilson was already a Territorial and served 1914 to 1919 as a Sergeant in the Royal Engineers.  Willie Birrell joined up with the Cameron Highlanders.  In the 2nd World War he served in the Canadian Forces.  In 1915, goalkeeper Paddy Savage joined the Fife & Forfar Yeomanry.  1916 saw Jock Mackenzie enlist in the Black Watch and Bobby Tait also joined the army.  In 1917 Willie Paterson became a gunner in the Royal Field Artillery.  Charlie Scott from Foulford Place who had been a signed Cowdenbeath player until 1913 was a lance corporal in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.  He was killed in action in 1916 and his name is on the Cowdenbeath War Memorial.
 

·      The Cowdenbeath players of that time who also served their country by carrying on the vital coal mining work that the nation depended on.
 

·      The end of the Miners Strike some 30 years ago which was more or less the final chapter in the story of local mining.

 

The Miners club crest will be sported both on the home shirt (Blue) and the away shirt (Red – which of course has echoes of the commemorative poppy and which featured as the club’s jersey colour until blue was adopted in 1911).  The ‘Blue Brazil’ may now be more widely used but Cowdenbeath FC also proudly still holds dear its age old nickname of ‘the Miners’.