The Football Project is delighted to welcome Sunderland fan Michael Graham to the site as he takes everyone through an incredible history of the club as told by the club badges that have symbolised it…

When I was a plucky little scamp embarking on my first flirtations with what would prove to be the hopelessly addictive world of football, my beloved Sunderland were stubbornly attaching a moniker to just about every official item they produced. It was impossible to not see it. If you visited Roker Park in the late 80s or early 90s and bought a programme, right there on the front cover, superimposed on whatever photograph was being used that week, were the words “The Caring Club”. If you were lucky enough to spot the Roker Rover, Sunderland AFC’s official publicity bus driving around town, you’d have noticed the words brandished all over that too. Mugs, pens, toys, pencil cases, just about anything you could find in the official club shop in fact, and there were those three little words, and always displayed in a fancy italic font as if to suggest they cared that much they hand handwritten every one of them themselves.

Obviously, it was all little more than a transparent marketing strategy designed to effectively con a supporter base in a perpetual state of cynicism following years of false dawns and broken promises into still wanting to hand over their money. However, there is some empirical justification to any suggestion that the club have always acknowledged the importance of representing it’s fans and their surroundings – and to find it all we have to do is look at the historical official club crests.

Despite having a long and (considerably more so than many realise) prosperous history, Sunderland have had few official club crests. When Horatio ‘Raich’ Carter lifted the club’s first FA Cup after defeating Preston North End at Wembley in 1937, he did so with the town’s coat of arms on his chest, not the club’s. It wasn’t until the 1960s when Sunderland AFC really embraced a crest of their own, but when they did and even though it was relatively rarely seen, they made sure it was one with which the fans could easily identify.

The crest depicted a black cat perched on a ball and set against a red and white striped shield. Below the shield there was a ribbon carrying the club’s name, and sitting atop of the shield was a scene taken directly from the town’s coat of arms showing a ship, slightly blackened to denote the town’s long history of coal mining and exports. Although coal mining and especially coal exports in Sunderland was very much on the decline at this stage, it was upon the coal industry that the town was built and flourished. Sixteenth century Sunderland was an unimportant, unassuming small settlement. One writer in 1565 described it as “a fishing town in great decay of building and inhabitants”. But things would change dramatically in 1589 thanks to two resourceful chaps. David Bowes and John Smith privately owned a nearby coal pit at Offerton and would use the poor quality coal extracted to evaporate sea water to produce salt, whilst the better quality coal would be exported to East Anglia and London by sea. The town grew rapidly.

It is worth pausing at this point to consider the story behind Sunderland’s association with a black cat. Modern day football fans will, no doubt, be be aware that the club are known as “The Black Cats”, but it wasn’t until 2000 when it was adopted as the club’s official nickname following a fan vote. But the Sunderland association with the black cat goes back almost a century before that.

In 1909, whilst the club were going through (what was then) an uncharacteristic trophy-drought, a 4-1 New Years Day home defeat to Liverpool had left the club languishing in the bottom half of the table. The following day the players reported to Roker Park only to find that a stray black cat had taken up residence in the dressing room. What followed was a mini-resurgence of fortune. The club went on to finish third in the league and, although not officially by the club, the black cat was adopted by the players. Later that season, the cat was even included in the team photograph. When Sunderland lost to Aston Villa in front of a then world record attendance of 121,919 at Crystal Palace in 1913, fans in their tens of thousands were carrying pictures of the cat with them for good luck and had firmly embraced it as their chosen mascot of the club. When the official Supporters Association formed in the 60s, it was a black cat they chose to depict on their badge.

So with the coal-blacked export ship and the black cat, the club had chosen to represent both their surroundings and their fans prominently on their first official crest. But times change and in 1977 the club decided to produce a new crest, this time with a ship fording on the Wear at it’s Apex. Shipbuilding had taken place on the Wear as far back as records exist. By the middle of the twentieth century, the River Wear and its Sunderland work-force had been responsible for over a quarter of all UK naval and merchant ships used in the Second World War. Sunderland was, quite simply, the biggest and most prolific shipbuilding town on the face of the planet. By the time the industry was nationalised in the 70s, the ship yards of the Wear were responsible for the livelihoods of almost 8000 men and their families. Without question, it was fitting that the ship dominated the football club’s crest just as the cranes of the ship yards dominated the town’s landscape.

Following years of decline in the industry, the last ship yard on the Wear closed on 7th December 1988, devastating the town’s economy. The ship still sat proudly on the Sunderland crest for almost a decade afterwards though, in homage to the heritage of the club’s fans. But when the club made the short move from Roker Park to the Stadium Of Light in 1997, it was deemed an appropriate time to once again change the badge.

The current club badge is, in many ways, a humbling monument to the industrial decline of the (now) city. As we have seen, the industries with which the club’s supporters have always identified and took pride in have long been represented upon the official club crest, but the only trace left to be found on the current version is a solitary small colliery wheel above the central shield to denote that the Stadium stands on the site once occupied by Wearmouth Colliery. Replacing industry on the crest is landmarks. In the top left quadrant, Penshaw Monument is seen. Built in the 19th century and dedicated to John George Lambton, first Earl of Durham, it is a half-sized replica of Athens’ Temple of Hephaestus. With it’s prominent position atop a hill outside the city’s borders, it has long been heralded as the “gateway to Sunderland”, and serves to acknowledge the depth of support the club enjoys from outside the city. In the bottom right quadrant Wearmouth Bridge, the first bridge to link the north and the south sides of the river in the city is depicted. Whilst you could be forgiven for thinking the two black lions allude to the black cats nickname, you would be wrong. Like the coal-blackened ship adorning the first official Sunderland badge, they are merely lifted directly from the city’s coat of arms. Just like the landscape they also once dominated Sunderland’s modern crest is all but wiped clean of it’s traditional industries.

In essence, to study the various Sunderland AFC crests over the years, each one providing it’s own unique snap-shot of the society and era in which it was embraced, is to witness a mini-case study in the social history that shaped the club’s and its fans’ surroundings. From its beginnings as a resourceful mining area and powerful mass-exporter of coal, through the ship building boom and rise to become the biggest ship-building town in the world, to its eventual decline and loss of its traditional and iconic industries.

“The Caring Club?” Perhaps a stretch. However it is irrefutable that Sunderland AFC is a club that has always appreciated how strong symbiotic links with local supporters is paramount to their own identity.

Michael is a Sunderland fan (you’ll be shocked to know) and can be found writing regularly for the excellent Roker Report. You can follow him on Twitter @Capt_Fishpaste and can find his work by going to RokerReport.com.