Beesotted contributor Lou Boyd reflects on how important it is for Brentford to remember it’s history … whilst at the same time make the positive changes needed to grow the club. With an up-coming 125th birthday and an impending house move, Bees fans may be wondering what the future holds for the off-shoot of Brentford rowing club.
All over the professional game the issue of identity rages; West Ham will effectively become New Ham United when they arrive, like squatters, on Leyton Orient’s patch… Luton fans have just ‘won’ power of veto over naming and image rights of their club… Udinese’s feeder experiment at Watford is waning… And Spurs are chatting up every ground owner south of Birmingham in order to up their capacity.
So we thought it timely to hover the microscope over the Brentf-alona era and see how it looks if we look inwards at our own identity?
Firstly, for us, the club have already announced that, after a careful bit of sourcing, the badge will be the oldest possible badge known… contained within a very Arsenal-esque red and gold frame. A shield within a shield, with both the dates and age and the club name repeated, perhaps an effort to cover the space where we would/should/could have a club motto, which according to expert Peter Gilham, we do not have.
The badge is traditional in certain respects but somehow manages to look even more cluttered then the current effort. Hopefully, in 2015, the club will be able to come up with a new, more iconic badge and offering the design of it up to democratic vote as Everton did recently, which was very well received by the fans.
Palace also had their badge ‘rebranded’ by a trendy design company who were given the brief of making it appeal to the ‘urban youth’ of Saaaarf London (aka Americanise it). Maybe Matthew Benham will do like what ex-chairman Dan Tana did and come up with his very own ‘castle badge’ effort (Stranger things have happened – ed)
Talking of ‘Tans’ in football, Cardiff’s near total re-brand, and it’s Bluebird backlash, leads us to the kits. We’ve settled on red and white stripes since the mid 1920s, and the nearest we’ve got to a change was when (then) youth player and future Bees captain, Michael Dobson, walked the green mile one night in a grey and red effort – the brainwave of Ron Noades (or his accountant) in the buying from the “reduced” bin at Kit Selection.
The masses spoke. The kit was subsequently abandoned. But what is it with teams in stripes? They don’t win trophies do they? Ask Argentina, Red Star, Athletico and Barca if they do. This still hasn’t stopped Southampton abandoning their stripes!
No such panic at Griffin Park where fans have to satisfy themselves with arguments over the colour of socks, the thickness of stripes and the colour of backs as if the Braemar Road Paddock (the centre of the recent Crawley “Throw Ball Receive Punch-Gate”) was the front row at London Fashion week. The fact is our first kit involved QPR style blue hoops and we share our home colours with our agoraphobic chums from Craven Cottage. But we like what we’ve got and know what we like… apparently.
The fan-voted away kit of a few years ago was the one of the worst selling kits ever according to the club. So maybe we should just let the manufacturers decide for us (surely if the club is going to use voting as a method to gauge opinion, they have to go out and ensure they get a large and broad enough cross-section of the target audience for the results to be valid. Not just the people who can be bothered to click on the yes/no button. -Ed)
Finally it’s names; we are Brentford, the Bees who play at Griffin Park. We don’t face the same problems that Hull City faced over naming (looks like the farcical Hull Tigers episode is now over thanks to the thumbs down from ex Brentford chairman Greg Dyke and his FA chums) and we don’t need to tweak it either, as Orient did to little or no impact in the 80s.
The Bees is a fine nickname – albeit a misinterpretation of the historic ‘Buck up B’s’ chant. As history has proven, we are often experts in screwing things up. We also unfortunately share our nickname with the Martin Allen employment trust – otherwise known as Barnet FC. So club names and nicknames aside, we have the pleasant problem of not only acquiring a lasting name for the Lionel Road site, but also the stands within the stadium as the New Road, Paddock and Ealing Road join the Royal Oak in the mists of history.
Sponsors may eventually dictate all of those factors and, hopefully, the income they bring in will outweigh any annoyance should we end up a ground with a ‘Chiltern & Buckinghamshire College University Stand’, as our provincial friends Wycombe proudly boast. The Golden Mile of the M4 could result in the GSK Dome or Fuller’s Field or we could end up with New Griffin Park, the Hive or plain old Lionel Road. I’ve always found it pleasantly diverse that the four league clubs in West London play at a Road, a Cottage, a Bridge and a Park – and I think we can do a lot better then naming our future home after a back road linking industrial estates.
A recent visit to the excellently ambitious, yet realist, New York Stadium in Rotherham gave me a lot of hope. A centrally located, fan-friendly stadium with a name that reaches in to Rotherham’s past, whilst leaving the opportunity of a possible link-up with future MLS and US sports teams (check Wikipedia for a succinct explanation for this).
So, there we have it. Brand Brentford in all it’s potential glory. When you weight it up, we won’t have the mad computer game ownership model of Ebbsfleet and we’re not likely to be begging the FA to halt a move to Woking… or block a name change to the Heathrow Honeybees.
We still have a long way to go to win over the Daily Mail army who live in Strand-On-The-Green or hit target 15,000. And we may need something to replace our ‘pub on four corners’ niche when we leave Griffin Park. Ignoring the temptation of grabbing short-term headlines by having BuzzBee ‘come out’ as the UK’s first openly gay mascot, there may not be any quick fixes to satisfy the faithful, respect our history and also take bold steps to make waves in the upper tiers of modern football.
Now seems as good a time as any to continue to plant the seeds so we can reap the benefits over the coming decades.
Lou Boyd
@LordLouCan
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Interesting and exciting times lie ahead. Naming rights will probably go to the highest bidder and I have no problem with that although I like your ‘Hive’ suggestion.
Didn’t we play on season in yellow?
On a pedantic note, ‘then’ doesn’t mean ‘than’.
I’m a Life-long Bees fan and Creative Director of one of the most successful UK design agencies of last 15 years. We’re based in Chiswick, and I’d LOVE to do this project for our great club.
Great piece.
I will propose our creds to BFC.
Would be an honour
How did it look, the fans favourite away kit from some years ago?
Light blue & dark blue stripes.
Times are changing and I think with the ambitious and ‘happy to stay in the background’ owner, who has bank rolled the majority of this success story for our club so far, to one of the most exciting times in the clubs 125 year history, it is more than any Bees fan over the last 60-70 years could ever expect. We might even be in a position where we have to get used to success, instead of abject failure, which is hard to do in itself, as it became quite easy over the years to go along to Brentford, with some seasons of small hope but ultimately realise that it was just not to be, again. Voices in the crowd still reflect this even now, when in my time watching them over the 30 or so years, have never once seen a team this good, or playing a style of football to be more than proud of and yet, I can still hear niggling voices, criticising a stray pass or a ‘keep possession’ ball backwards as opposed to 40 yards forward. It appears some people struggle to cope with change. I embrace it. Like most clubs fans who were opposed to a move to a new stadium, Sundeland and Middlesborough spring to mind, they get used to the plush, modern facilities and very quickly you embrace the new and forget the old. It has to happen, it’s evolution and has happened since time began so let’s enjoy it and if it means cheering and saying positive things instead of the obligatory, ‘typical Brentford’ comments in the next few years, let’s embrace it and look back on this period in our clubs history as one of the best times yet.
On an only negative note, that 125 year badge is dreadful, too fussy and not in the slightest bit appealing. I’m not a fan of the new one where we apparently let a star gazer who likes Middlesex an input to assist in designing it but in my time, the classic Tana castle badge is still the memory of my youth and the most iconic of all of them and think it would look as modern today as it did back then and look great on a retro adidas style kit as well as the new stands and outside of the new Hive stadium or New Griffin Park ground.
Finally, let’s cross the line of this seasons promotion, which dare I say it, I can still see us being crowned champions yet and then move on to next season, where we will inevitably not win or draw as many as this but I hope people realise that this is still progress and not revert back to the negativity that all to often encompasses the elder generation of Bees fans I think.