150th Anniversary kit/celebrations

[Parsonblue]

10 minutes ago, SIMON GARNERS 194 said:

The original minutes and Books have been sadly lost to time..all early references point to Blue n White Quaters...early written evidence has been given to support this.The earliest known Team Photo supports this.

With all respect,not once in any of your History Books are all White Shirts mentioned.

The evidence for the white shirt only came to light in recent years with the discovery of the minutes in a programme from 1909.

[JHRover]

We're pretty unusual as far as I can tell in the badges that we've had during our long history.

There's the uncertainty / confusion / lack of evidence around the Maltese cross, but even if it was adopted and used it wasn't really a club badge and certainly doesn't appear to have been worn for very long, maybe the first couple of years or so at most.

Then - I hope I am right - we didn't have any emblem or badge through most of our history from say the 1880s until the 1970s - aside from special occasions like the 60 FA Cup final when we wore the town coat of arms on the shirt

Then from the 70s into the 80s we had a boring and limited effort of the 'red rose' badge with simply 'BRFC' underneath. I would be interested to know the background to this - I suspect a decision was made in the 70s in keeping with the direction of travel in football that we needed an emblem or badge and this was the easiest/quickest thing they could come up with.

I also suspect that by the late 80s they realised with the rapidly changing world of design, trademarks, kits and everything else that the red rose badge wasn't acceptable in the modern era and we needed to get ourselves a proper badge with the club name on it, which is how we ended up with the current badge. 

The current badge - which has been through a few different forms and reincarnations - has a confusing history too. As per the above this appeared on club programmes as far back as the 60s, but not on the shirts until the late 80s/early 90s.

Strange that we would design and adopt a badge to use on programmes and letterheads etc. but not use it on kits and then use a totally different badge of the red rose on kits - maybe because that one was cheaper and easier to transfer to shirts than the quite complex design of the current one. 

It probably all comes back to the uniqueness of the blue and white halves which have always been the club's USP and for what it is known around the world and this previously negated the need to have a badge. Obviously in the modern era we need a modern badge that meets trademark requirements and can be mass produced. 

Back to the anniversary, I'd have preferred either for us to 'update' the current badge for the occasion or if we wanted to go traditional either not have a badge at all for the special kit or perhaps use the town coat of arms version for the special occasion. 

[Herbie6590]

3 minutes ago, JHRover said:

We're pretty unusual as far as I can tell in the badges that we've had during our long history.

There's the uncertainty / confusion / lack of evidence around the Maltese cross, but even if it was adopted and used it wasn't really a club badge and certainly doesn't appear to have been worn for very long, maybe the first couple of years or so at most.

Then - I hope I am right - we didn't have any emblem or badge through most of our history from say the 1880s until the 1970s - aside from special occasions like the 60 FA Cup final when we wore the town coat of arms on the shirt

Then from the 70s into the 80s we had a boring and limited effort of the 'red rose' badge with simply 'BRFC' underneath. I would be interested to know the background to this - I suspect a decision was made in the 70s in keeping with the direction of travel in football that we needed an emblem or badge and this was the easiest/quickest thing they could come up with.

I also suspect that by the late 80s they realised with the rapidly changing world of design, trademarks, kits and everything else that the red rose badge wasn't acceptable in the modern era and we needed to get ourselves a proper badge with the club name on it, which is how we ended up with the current badge. 

The current badge - which has been through a few different forms and reincarnations - has a confusing history too. As per the above this appeared on club programmes as far back as the 60s, but not on the shirts until the late 80s/early 90s.

Strange that we would design and adopt a badge to use on programmes and letterheads etc. but not use it on kits and then use a totally different badge of the red rose on kits - maybe because that one was cheaper and easier to transfer to shirts than the quite complex design of the current one. 

It probably all comes back to the uniqueness of the blue and white halves which have always been the club's USP and for what it is known around the world and this previously negated the need to have a badge. Obviously in the modern era we need a modern badge that meets trademark requirements and can be mass produced. 

Back to the anniversary, I'd have preferred either for us to 'update' the current badge for the occasion or if we wanted to go traditional either not have a badge at all for the special kit or perhaps use the town coat of arms version for the special occasion. 

This was the club badge when I first started going to Ewood in the 60's - it was on decals in the Nuttall St stand for sure & started being used on the programme (replacing the town crest) in 67/68.

The Tudor rose badge is the first (non-town crest) badge I recall on the shirt - replaced eventually by "the club badge".

[...]

18 minutes ago, Mike E said:

I would. I might even finally grow a mo for Movember to wear it.

I don’t normally grow it out because blond mo’s with my big glasses look a bit noncey 😅

Don't forget the "I say old chum" side parting.

[Herbie6590]

5 minutes ago, ... said:

Don't forget the "I say old chum" side parting.

Let's leaven the mood by remembering this...

 

[JHRover]

16 minutes ago, Herbie6590 said:

This was the club badge when I first started going to Ewood in the 60's - it was on decals in the Nuttall St stand for sure & started being used on the programme (replacing the town crest) in 67/68.

The Tudor rose badge is the first (non-town crest) badge I recall on the shirt - replaced eventually by "the club badge".

Yes that more or less fits with my understanding of dates etc.

I reckon that the 'club badge' now used is probably quite awkward to produce on kits (which is why today we often get the monochrome plastic version used as it is much easier than stitching it with the detail and different colours).

So whilst it started appearing in the 60s on print programmes, signs and stationary transferring it onto kits was seen as unnecessary or difficult. 

Then in the late 80s / early 90s someone realised that this was actually a pretty unique and perfect badge for us to roll out on our kits, at a time when most other clubs were adopting modern designs and where it has remained since. 

[roverblue]

I thought the leak was going to be a wind up, i shouldn't have been surprised that the administration could monumentally cock up something which was an amazing opportunity.

I am sure anyone alive to buy one has only ever seen rovers play in blue and white.

You could ask 10,000 fans what colour it should have been and they all would have said blue and white.

Venkys "Lets put out an all white shirt and save a few quid on production costs of using colour"

[Torgeir]

It's a one off shirt. Our 125 year anniversary shirt was blue and white halves, I don't see the problem in going all white if that was how our history started. As for the badge, I won't get into that one 😄

 

[...]

30 minutes ago, Herbie6590 said:

Let's leaven the mood by remembering this...

 

Hahahah classic 

[Bronzed A Donis]

At least they didn't put us in Claret like Netflix did...

If they came out on Saturday in the shirt, carrying leather balls with caps on, it would probably be something different and look memorable.

My issue is this just seems a very lazy attempt, a missed opportunity for some positive PR and sales. It also looks cheap and rubbish and its rumoured to be £90. Its an open goal and they've done their usual. Even if we did play in that and I can't say either way,  they could have still made it more retro looking or sell it as part of a packaged box with replicas of the minutes or something, something different.

The whole anniversary so far has felt a bit 'meh'. We're one of the few clubs in world football with a history this good and we're just coasting with this rarest of milestone years.

I don't want to hear about well for the 100th/125th we didn't do much. The world has moved on, football and its place in the world are different, look at other clubs around us, even in non-league do more.

This anniversary should have been a PR mana from heaven opportunity to restore some of the damage from the last 15 years and it all seems like an afterthought.

We've had some caps given to whoever was around presented to a few thousand in the rain. A "legends" game against a team who beat us , being played after a 1st team game and a debatable special kit that's not even on sale alongside a official book of our history that doesn't mention it!

The website promises the below for Saturday :

live entertainment, commemorative memorabilia, special guest appearances, fan activations and stirring tributes to the club’s rich past.

Its in 2 days and unless I've missed something, can anyone tell me what any of this will look like befitting of our great clubs celebration?

WTF is a fan activation? Conjures up images of Suhail whispering a codeword that triggers the Blackburn end into a ritualistic dance.

[Mattyblue]

I remember a real buzz around the 125th, this time, well…

[Hasta]

Any idea what happens in the hour between the games yet? 

Have we managed to muster XI "legends" yet?

 

[Tim Southampton Rover]

Has anyone told Old Etonians that they're playing us? I'll admit to only having a quick check but found nothing on any of their socials 😂

[Rogerb]

6 minutes ago, Tim Southampton Rover said:

Has anyone told Old Etonians that they're playing us? I'll admit to only having a quick check but found nothing on any of their socials 😂

Kevin Gallagher on Tuesday night match commentary mentioned it was an Old Etonians veterans team and Rovers had 15-16 players lined up

[Mattyblue]

Definitely sounds like something you’d want to hang round for…

[Tim Southampton Rover]

They could have sold team spots on a reformed Blackburn Olympic, which could have then continued afterwards as a proper team - would have been pretty fun to watch. I'd rather watch a legends game against fellow fans than a group of veterans of another team. 

[roverblue]

Is the white shirt definitely confirmed as it doesn't appear to be on sale in the club shop?

https://www.roverstore.co.uk/150th-anniversary-collection/150th-anniversary-co/

[roverblue]

Oddly, someone at the club got close to what I was expecting for the anniversary shirt albeit in polo form...

[JHRover]

I can't get over how cheap and nasty that range looks.

[MarkBRFC]

18 minutes ago, JHRover said:

I can't get over how cheap and nasty that range looks.

I can, it sums up the last 15 years perfectly.

[CheshireRover]

I personally have always liked the connection to the Maltese cross, and have often said the club should do more to play on that heritage. It was (almost certainly) the first badge worn by players representing the club during a Blackburn Rovers fixture, whether every player wore it is clearly up for debate, but nevertheless the club should've done more with that history sooner.

I think from the perspective of a (former) marketing professional, whoever was the ultimate decision maker on this project has opted to use it because it seems the most historic externally, IE to someone who isn't a Rovers fan, because it's a very ancient symbol that really isn't used that much in the modern day - maybe it is in Malta but that aside. 

I can see the logic of the white kit, and I think objectively it's a nice idea - it does exactly what it says and reflects the original kit we had 150 years ago as far as the records currently state. Does it truly represent Blackburn Rovers, our town or our history? Probably not, it should've been blue and white and probably included the town badge - but as Gary Aspden found out, it's not always easy to get the necessary permissions to use the town name in branding (the Adidas Blackburn trainers) so I presume the same is the truth for the badge, and as we know they don't like to do anything that requires hard work down at Ewood.

I'll still buy it, assuming it's ever put on sale, because in 15, 20, 25 years it'll represent to me 150 years of Rovers' existence, hopefully by then that lot will be gone and the anniversary celebrations won't be quite as underwhelming!

Edited 6 hours ago by CheshireRover

[J*B]

5 hours ago, Herbie6590 said:

On a separate but related note...if BRFCS sold a "Bob Crompton*" shirt for £60  - could I bank on at least 50 of you buying it ?

Because if you will...😉

 

*more Cambridge Blue...white half on the LHS (over the heart)

How quickly can you turn around a white kit with a blue maltese cross, with a 135/15 logo on the inside, sold with an independent assessment of the last 15 years of Venkys ownership, at less than £90?

I notice rumoured 150th anniversary kit has no trademarked items on it. 

[...]

1 hour ago, JHRover said:

I can't get over how cheap and nasty that range looks.

Went to Cov away and nipped in their store. The quality of items and stuff in there was world's apart from ours. Had it been rovers items I'd of spend loads in there

[...]

4 hours ago, JHRover said:

We're pretty unusual as far as I can tell in the badges that we've had during our long history.

There's the uncertainty / confusion / lack of evidence around the Maltese cross, but even if it was adopted and used it wasn't really a club badge and certainly doesn't appear to have been worn for very long, maybe the first couple of years or so at most.

Then - I hope I am right - we didn't have any emblem or badge through most of our history from say the 1880s until the 1970s - aside from special occasions like the 60 FA Cup final when we wore the town coat of arms on the shirt

Then from the 70s into the 80s we had a boring and limited effort of the 'red rose' badge with simply 'BRFC' underneath. I would be interested to know the background to this - I suspect a decision was made in the 70s in keeping with the direction of travel in football that we needed an emblem or badge and this was the easiest/quickest thing they could come up with.

I also suspect that by the late 80s they realised with the rapidly changing world of design, trademarks, kits and everything else that the red rose badge wasn't acceptable in the modern era and we needed to get ourselves a proper badge with the club name on it, which is how we ended up with the current badge. 

The current badge - which has been through a few different forms and reincarnations - has a confusing history too. As per the above this appeared on club programmes as far back as the 60s, but not on the shirts until the late 80s/early 90s.

Strange that we would design and adopt a badge to use on programmes and letterheads etc. but not use it on kits and then use a totally different badge of the red rose on kits - maybe because that one was cheaper and easier to transfer to shirts than the quite complex design of the current one. 

It probably all comes back to the uniqueness of the blue and white halves which have always been the club's USP and for what it is known around the world and this previously negated the need to have a badge. Obviously in the modern era we need a modern badge that meets trademark requirements and can be mass produced. 

Back to the anniversary, I'd have preferred either for us to 'update' the current badge for the occasion or if we wanted to go traditional either not have a badge at all for the special kit or perhaps use the town coat of arms version for the special occasion. 

I'd of accepted a quartered shirt with a Maltese cross

[RevidgeBlue]

7 hours ago, Parsonblue said:

The evidence for the white shirt only came to light in recent years with the discovery of the minutes in a programme from 1909.

It's evidence that a motion might have been passed at some point It's not evidence that we ever actually  wore the kit.

It's a bit like convicting someone of murder on the basis that they said they were going to do it 12 months previously with zero actual evidence they eventually followed up on the threat.

In any event, even if we did start  in a white kit, we know we did swap to blue and white halves so it seems the founders must not have liked the white and swapped to the blue and white halves as a nod to their old school colours. We dont know if we played in a white kit at all, for a week, a month, a season, or just as a temporary measure because the blue and white ones weren't ready.

We do know we were in blue and white halves by 1898 (Edit: Sorry 1878!) and of course they could have been in use for some time prior to that so if the white shirt ever existed at all, it must have proved unpopular (with the founders) and been an extremely short lived thing.

But hey, let's use it as an anniversary shirt 150 years later.

Edited 2 hours ago by RevidgeBlue