"CHUCKLOG" Football and music, the online portal of Charlie Middleton

23/07 The Club, the Badge and the Kit – The Story!!!

There has been a lot of discussion between supporters regarding the kits, the colours and the club badge.  Following the game at Kiln Park I thought it would be useful to put some meat on the bones of this discussion.

Obviously, I wasn’t watching the team on the opening game of the season in 1948; however certain books and photos have shown that Corby Town ran out in a kit very similar to the new Nike first team kit that they will hopefully be sporting on the 13th of August 2005.  By that I mean white shirt, black trim, black shorts, and white socks with black trim.  At this point there was no club crest or badge appearing on the kit, it wasn’t really a done thing back then, well not until the early sixties that you could see a club badge on the old division 1 kits of the likes of Tottenham Hotspur (FA cup winners 1961 and 1962) and Wolverhampton Wanderers who had won the cup in 1960.  If you looked at reference books showing celebrations of these events, you wouldn’t be surprised to find that in many respects both the kits and badges have changed and I’m sure will continue to change however team colours have remained constant.  So what has this to do with the Steelmen?

Well, the nickname the Steelmen was an obvious choice.  The town grew off the back of the Steelworks.  The works already had a works team (now officially named S+L Corby FC) and they took yellow and blue as the club colours from the trains that supported the transfer of steel and other products around the Stewarts and Lloyds site.

The board and directors picked white and black, painted the new Occupation Road ground in the same tones and a football club was born.  It is around this time that, in an attempt to raise profile and draw (a pun!) support from the growing town, a contest was arranging with the Evening Telegraph to help design a new club badge.  The winners work is still used today and is the main emblem that we use on the web site.

The “steelman” was used on pin badges and the official CTFC supporter’s handbook that gave details of fixtures and such, and that’s it was until the 70’s.  White and black, some times the socks were white and some times black but that was the kit and there was no badge on the shirts of the kit until the Pitcher years.

Arthur Pitcher was a local business man and had many fingers in many pies and was the Chairman of the club.  As a kid I knew him as my Gran worked at the Rutland Cinema and then the Civic theatre where he was the boss.  He brought me programs from away games and was on the scene when Corby Town changed there first team kit colour.  Shirt sponsorship was the big deal back then and if you could get a local company to show an interest, they could get there name emblazoned on the kit, enter Rovaround.  Here was the first wave of new enterprise into Corby and so Matt McIlwain’s team started the 1980-81 season in all red, sponsored by the furniture warehouse firm and the club badge had changed too.  The Steelman had gone and the new corporate civic emblem, that could once been seen on the front of the cinema above the town centre bus station, was now on the front of the match day program though not as yet on the shirt itself.

Pitcher was still involved several managers later, Gordon Livesey and Harry Fallon had held the reins and the first team kit had been changed back, and the new sponsor “Youngers Tartan Bitter” was being proudly worn by the Steelmen on a plain white shirt.  It was whilst Harry was the manager and just before Colin Clarke took over that we saw a new kit and style appear on the pitch at Occupation Road – the pin stripe !  Still a white shirt, now with the fashion highlight of a thin line coupled with black shorts and white socks and for the first time in 1982 and club badge on the kit.  Not a steelman, or the corporate logo of the town civic and council but the silhouetted black bird –the Corbie- in mid flap over a ball.  And it was this tam badge that hung around for quite a while – in fact it was still in use after CTFC moved to the Triangle in 1985.
 

Many other kits came and went, the Diadora black and white striped kit was appreciated by the fans, still with the Corbie and ball badge – but now in an oval frame and all red. More kits spring to mind, some striped and some plain but it wasn’t until the black and white quarter kit from 1996 that a steelman reappeared on the kit.  I know this as it was me that put the design together with Tom Howarth.  Not to dissimilar from today’s badge as the original steel man appeared but not alone.  The ball was a new feature the words “Corby Town” was set in to a scroll and the nickname “Steel-men” hung above the logo.  As the badge goes it looked fine and the first team kit looked complete but it was only an iron transfer.  There was the problem that the team badge wasn’t appearing any where in the program and whilst the bird n’ ball (now flying left to right) and the steelman and current site logo appeared on the cover of the match day program.  This has been a problem for a long time and no synergy has been seen between the shirt badge, blazer badge, match day program, stationary and what has appeared in opposition programs (this is due to an old web site that still carries the ill fated triangular team badge, still available on the net however) and it is now that this surly must come to an end.

As we approach the new season 2005-06, a new first team kit has been ordered, and a new badge was designed to bring Corby town into the 21 century.  It was clean and crisp, looked good in black and white and would have transferred onto other merchandise better, however the choice was taken by one member of the board that this was wrong and now we are left with a possible situation where the current badge can’t be used or won’t transfer or shared between the other areas of the club that may need access to it.

Once we at thesteelmen.com have a copy of the new badge we will get it to you.  Replicas of the kit will be available and we will give you the chance to see what could have been.  You may ask having read this … why ?  But we at this web site believe this club belongs to all of us and yet again decisions are being made with out consultation of the most important people – us the fans and supporters !