Laugh! I nearly choked on me pie and mash. The lads down at Charlton are a right bunch of scallywags, each one of them every bit as funny as Charlton fan Jim Davidson, funnier even and let’s face it that’s not hard to achieve. In April 2002 the matchday programme carried an article asking fans to come up with a new badge design, saying the local council deemed the sword in the hand motif too aggressive for the family-friendly club and asked if they could help in considering three other designs. The following were asked to be considered. The first of these was the club’s initials that have an uncanny resemblance to that of the north of the river Fulham. (PIC 1) The second a fish and a football, with the fish referring to the club’s nickname “The Addicts”, from Haddocks. (PIC 2) And third a robin also with a football and also referring to a previous nickname “The Robins”. (PIC 3) Fans were asked to phone in and vote online. This they did in their hundreds. The winner was the wag who thought up this jolly jape as it was April Fools all round, nice one!
Another wheeze was played by the gentleman who helped me with this page and many thanks to, Ben Hayes for his help. It was widely believed and reported in some prominent papers and football magazines that the sword in the present badge belonged to a local family coat of arms, that family being the Percival clan. This was a hoax, as Ben informed me: “I know it was a hoax, Paul, because I was the one who made it up”. Why? He didn’t say. Just more proof of the jolly japes had by one and all down at the Valley. Anyway, read on and believe what you will but Ben tells me the rest is true! The earliest badge worn by Charlton, and then only occasionally, was a rather clever laying out of the club’s initials C A F to look like a club, as in a club in the pack of cards. So you had the CAF for Charlton Athletic Football and it was all shaped like a club, clever or what! (PIC 4) It was replaced in the 1940s by a red and white quartered badge with C A F C and a robin. As I mentioned earlier “The Robins” was a nickname of Charlton as they wore red, and they were another team that ran out onto the pitch accompanied by the song: “When the red, red robin goes bob, bob bobbing along”. The robin was standing on a football and again the badge was rarely used. (PIC 5)
In 1964 the club adopted the Greenwich coat of arms. (PIC 6) These were granted in 1903 and the arms show six stars and a radiant star above an hourglass or egg timer as we know them today, this relates to the Royal Observatory, the home of GMT, Greenwich Mean Time. Above the hourglass is what looks like a starfish but is described in heraldry as a radiant star. The crest on a silver and blue wreath has an ancient black ship with one mast, sail furled and flags flying with two gold anchors crossed in front. This is related to the royal naval association with Greenwich. The motto “TEMPORE UTIMUR”, which means quite appropriately, We Use Time. This was put on all kinds of stuff including blazer badges. Ben informs me he is the proud owner of one, probably quite rare as they were never worn on the shirts. Then it was learnt that the borough was to merge with Woolwich. So this new badge was introduced in 1965 and incorporates two radiant stars and the egg timer from the Greenwich arms and the three cannon of the Woolwich Arsenal. (PIC 7) It has a new motto which is in English instead of Latin for a change and is, “We Govern by Serving”.
But rather than fully embrace the new arms they held a competition (a real one this time) to design a new badge and in 1965 came up with the present design. (PIC 8) A new nickname was also suggested but didn’t catch on, the Valliant’s, as in the Valley which is the name of the ground. I have unearthed many explanations as to the source of the long-standing nickname “The Addicts”. Some feel that it may be a derivation of Athletic, as with the Latics of Oldham Athletic. By far the most romantic, and there is evidence it could be true despite being wary of anything coming out of Charlton, is that Charlton would treat the opposition to a fish supper after the game, the fish being a Haddock, which is pronounced sarf of the river as addick.
The place-name Charlton comes from the Anglo-Saxon and means, the settlement of peasants or free men. Charlton’s ground the Valley used to have the biggest capacity in the country, except for Wembley of course, some 70,000 I think it was and I remember going there in the 1970s for a night match and one of the stands would go on and on into the clouds like Jacobs ladder, or so it seemed. Now of course new rules mean new capacities and now the valley holds 27,111. Charlton’s local rivals are Millwall and Crystal Palace. If you are addicted to this club then go score a hit at www.cafc.co.uk
