Sheffield Wednesday Badge

There was no obvious club badge, or crest (that I have found) before the 1930's. Official documents just used the club title. However in 1907/8 the Sheffield Star launched the Saturday Sport Special - called the Green'Un. The cartoonist of the Green'Un began representing Wednesday as a spindly legged Owl and United (The Cutlers) as a cut throat razor..

After a couple of years the Owl had a make-over becoming a portly, top hat and spats, cigar smoking gent, while United's razor had developed into a cigarette smoking, flat capped blade.

The first sign of an Owl badge connected to Wednesday came in the form of the supporters club badge, which represented an owl in front of a football. This remained the badge of the supporters club until at least the late 1960's.

Up until the 1930's, the programmes had been almost entirely text based, but by 1935 Wednesday had introduced their first banner headline. This included an incorrect establishment date for the club of 1866, a picture of the ground looking over the corner of the South Stand and East Bank, and the dates of Wednesday's honours (which sadly would be barely different form a similar list in today's programmes.)

By 1950/51 Wednesday had developed a crest consisting of the club initials over the city crest (sheaves of corn and crossed arrows).

In 1956/57 Wednesday introduced a club badge which included the motto, "consilio et animis". The owl is sitting on a branch over the white rose (for Yorkshire) with crossed arrows in the upper corners.

For the centenary year (they had sorted out the correct year of Wednesday's foundation by then) Wednesday decided to introduce a new mascot (Wednesday did have a monkey for a mascot briefly when someone gave McConnell,a relatively new signing from Sunderland in 1908, a monkey called "Jacko").For better or for worse, Ozzie now attends home matches with a number of his relatives.


Looking like an outcast from the children's TV programme "The Herbs", this short, fat-arsed, big eyed monstrosity was thankfully short lived - appearing in 1971 and disappearing shortly thereafter.

The line art, minimalist owl came into being just as Wednesday were going through the worst patch in their history (and difficult though it is to believe, they were much worse than today's overpaid, underachieving bunch.) A competition was held to design a new badge. The winner was a student at the University. The badge came into use around the 1971/2 season.

The badge remained unchanged through the 70's, 80's and early 90's until the 95/96 and the introduction of the faux-Birmingham shirt. The minimalist owl briefly disappeared, to be replaced by a close ancestor of the 50's/60's owl on a branch. This time the owl sat on something that looked suspiciously like barbed wire, but which I take to be a symmetrical branch, under a blue rose (Blue??) all of which is under "Hillsborough". The owl is flanked by the clubs initials. The striped appearance was camouflage so that it could not be seen on the shirt? (you'd think they would want it to stand out.)

In 95/96, the same badge as above, but with a totally white background, appeared on the orange away shirt. By 96/97 Wednesday had returned to proper blue and white stripes, and so the white badge was put on the blue stripe of the shirt. And very good it looked too.

At the same time as the minimalist owl was being usurped from its rightful place on the players left tit, it was making an appearance on a circular design which was used for a year or two on Wednesday products and in the programme, but which then disappeared. The design consisted of three concentric circles.
The outer circle :- Sheffield Wednesday Football Club PLC
The middle circle :- Consilio et Animis Est. 1867
The inner circle :- minimalist owl.

The latest club crest came about in 1999-2000. This saw the return of minimalist owl and the clubs initials writ large.