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Racing Club de Strasbourg Alsace, aka RC Strasbourg. A French club with a giant track record. It has won all three major French trophies in its time and has racked up over 2,000 games in the top flight. Their badge is an interesting-looking creature, but not quite as interesting as the region from which they come: Alsace. Once again, a simple football badge reveals an absolutely fascinating story. Anyone who did GCSE History will be familiar with the name Alsace and why it was so important during the 20th century. The region sits nestled between France and Germany and, together with its neighbouring province of Lorraine, sat alongside some of Europe's richest iron ore fields – an essential ingredient for all would-be European empires. It proved too tempting. In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the newly formed German nation defeated the French and seized it. Which is why the history of RC Strasbourg is actually quite unique. Founded in 1906, it was originally German. Called Fußballclub Neudorf, it was made up of students from the south of the city and was bankrolled by their teacher. The city and region were divided during this period between German elites who were very much in favour of their new masters in Berlin and locals who felt more deeply rooted in their French identity. The existing clubs all had substantial German backing. Fußballclub Neudorf didn't, and as such it immediately attracted supporters looking for a way to express their Frenchness – for want of a better word – against the German occupiers. (It was perhaps more complicated than I'm making out; the region was linguistically and culturally German until it fell into the French orbit in the 1600s.) In fact, if we're being really picky here, the debate goes way back to 842. Some chap called Charlemagne – King of the Franks – built his capital in what is now modern-day Germany. A few decades after he shuffled off this mortal coil, his grandsons met in Strasbourg and pledged to work together for the lasting peace of Europe (...there have been a few hiccups, admittedly). The Oaths of Strasbourg were written in both an early form of German and an early form of French. So identity in this region is a little complicated, to put it mildly. But there were certainly deep French roots and plenty of people wanting to express them around the time those students began kicking a ball about. However, hopes that they'd immediately make their mark on the Germans were dashed in their very first match against the aptly named FC Germania. The students abandoned the game at half-time at 7–0 down and presumably went off to drown their sorrows in red wine. Their form improved over the next decade, but their luck didn't. The team won promotion to the German First Division and secured a permanent playing field... in 1914. History boffins amongst you will already have realised that this was quite an unfortunate date. The First World War broke out that summer, the team's players were enlisted, and Alsace found itself right next to the front line. Football was put on hold for a while. When it returned, things had changed somewhat. As part of the famous Treaty of Versailles signed in 1919, Germany was forced to surrender its military, its empire and large swathes of territory – including Alsace-Lorraine. The French, to rub salt into the wound, delighted in making the Germans sign the document in the Palace of Versailles (just outside Paris – go and visit, it is astonishingly beautiful), as it was in that very same place that the Germans had forced France to surrender Alsace-Lorraine nearly fifty years earlier. The French wanted symbolic payback. Obviously, things got a little messy again in the 1940s – you may have read about it – and the club stopped playing once more while its players tried to avoid being drafted into the Wehrmacht. So when Fußballclub Neudorf returned, they were French rather than German and needed a far less German-sounding name. They opted for Racing Club – a direct nod to one of France's most famous clubs at the time, Racing Club de France of Paris. One of the oldest clubs in the country, it was steeped in French identity, and its ground, complete with racing track, had hosted the athletics events at the 1900 Olympics. I suppose it would be a bit like... I don't know... France invading Dover and then Dover FC renaming itself Dover Saint-Germain. Or something. Anyhow, the point was clear: They were definitely French now. So that's merely the club's geography and national identity explained. What about the actual badge? Let’s start with the cathedral that sits alongside the club's initials. Strasbourg Cathedral was, for over two centuries, the world's tallest building, with its spire reaching 142 metres in 1647 and not being beaten until those pesky cathedral builders over in Hamburg surpassed it. Strasbourg was an important Roman town and, as such, when the Romans switched to Christianity, Strasbourg did too. Remarkably, it had its first Christian bishop in 346. Pretty incredible, really. So what then of those curved wings? Well – I didn’t know this until I read it – it is a stork. Specifically, the White Stork, which is to Alsace what the Liver Bird is to Liverpool or the canary is to Norwich. It is identity. For centuries these enormous birds have migrated from Northern Europe in the summer down to Africa in the winter. Alsace sits directly under their flight path. They became common sights, nesting on rooftops, church towers and chimneys across the region, becoming so closely associated with Alsace that they effectively became its unofficial mascot. According to local folklore, a house blessed with a stork's nest would enjoy good fortune, prosperity and family happiness. In fact, the famous tale of storks delivering babies can trace its roots back to Alsace, where children were said to wait in a magical pond before being collected and delivered to expectant parents by the birds. By the 1970s, the stork had almost disappeared from the region altogether, but a hugely successful conservation effort brought it back from the brink. Today, the sight of a stork perched atop a half-timbered Alsatian house is once again commonplace. So if Racing Club Strasbourg wanted a symbol that screamed "We are Alsace", they could hardly have picked anything more fitting than a giant bird famous for delivering babies and bringing good luck. So there, finally, we have it! Racing Club Strasbourg. Built atop the very meeting point of the tectonic plates of French and German identity, begun by German students but named to stick two fingers up at the Germans (if you excuse the British phrase...), the seat of religious power, home of world-beating architecture and heir to a tale linked to one of Europe’s largest and most beautiful birds. A tale of movement, pride and achievement. That would be RC Strasbourg.

Absolutely had no intention of doing this one. But. Sometimes you come across a team that just demands a deeper dive behind the scenes, and FC Astoria Walldorf – competing in the Regionalliga Südwest (the German fourth tier) – are just such a team. One of my all-time favourite history stories is that of John Jacob Astor, and this team, and this badge, pay homage to that man. So let's #GetTheBadgeIn and see what is behind this badge and the team's name... To begin this tale, we need to go back to 1763 and the small town of Walldorf in western Germany (near the French border). Wald means forest and Dorf means village – so literally a small woodland village. It was there that a child called John Jacob Astor was born to the local butcher (a butcher's boy – just like Ipswich legend Thomas Wolsey...). He began learning his father's trade from a young age but wasn't happy with his lot and spied opportunities elsewhere. In his late teens, Astor moved to London, where one of his brothers was already established in business. He learned English and worked in the musical instrument trade. After the end of the American Revolutionary War, opportunities opened up in the newly independent United States. In 1784, at the age of 21, Astor boarded a ship and sailed to New York City with little money and few connections. Legend has it that during the voyage he met a fur trader who explained the enormous profits that could be made in the North American fur trade. That conversation may have changed his life. Astor began by selling musical instruments but quickly moved into buying and selling animal furs. At the time, European demand for beaver hats was enormous. Beaver pelts from North America were highly prized, and traders could earn huge profits transporting them across the Atlantic (think: The Revenant). Astor built trading relationships with Native American communities, frontier traders and European buyers. He proved exceptionally skilled at logistics and negotiation. By the early 1800s, he had created the American Fur Company, which became one of the largest businesses in North America. His network stretched from the Great Lakes to the Rocky Mountains. He even sold vast quantaties of furs and other goods to China and Russia - one of the first American businesses to really profit from the cross-Pacific trade. The company owned its own large cargo ship, appropirately called The Beaver, that sailed the route between America and Canton (today's Guangzhou). For a time, Astor effectively monopolised the American fur trade. Unlike many wealthy merchants, Astor realised that the fur trade would not last forever. So he struck upon his next great breakthrough and began investing his profits in land around New York City. At the time, much of Manhattan north of the settled city was farmland and countryside. Many people thought he was wasting money. "The city will never grow that big," they said. Astor was right. They were wrong. As New York grew, the value of his land increased dramatically. By the 1830s and 1840s, much of his wealth came not from furs but from real estate. And, just as if he were playing real-world Monopoly, Astor upgraded his property empire by building hotels... and not just any hotels... The world's best hotels. His most famous was the Astor House, opened in 1836 (pictured). It was knocked down in 1967 to make way for One Astor Plaza - a 54 storey office block. The Astor House quickly became one of the finest hotels in America. Politicians, businessmen, foreign visitors and celebrities stayed there. It helped establish the Astor name as a symbol of wealth and prestige. Later generations of the Astor family would become even more famous in the hotel business, eventually helping create the legendary Waldorf-Astoria, which dominated the city and stood near Central Park. Despite becoming America's richest man, Astor never forgot where he came from. He sent money back to Walldorf and supported local projects. His success became a source of pride for the town. The connection was so strong that when later generations of Walldorf residents came to think of a name for their football team, there could only be one choice, and FC Astoria Walldorf was born. Imagine a small town in South Africa calling themselves Musk FC in honour of all the help that Elon sent to the... oh... oh yes... poor example. He's never helped anyone. But if he were a decent human being, you could understand someone doing it. So that's the origin of the club's name. The tree on the badge comes from the coat of arms of the town of Walldorf, which, as we've already seen, was a heavily forested area – hence the name. And as if one multi-billionaire son wasn't enough, Walldorf now boasts two. Dietmar Hopp was born in nearby Heidelberg. After training as a computer engineer and working for IBM, he and three colleagues left the company and formed their own little outfit called Systeme, Anwendungen und Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung (Systems, Applications and Products in Data Processing) – or SAP. Today, SAP is Europe's most valuable company by market value and the largest software company in the world outside the USA. It is headquartered in Walldorf and has been the long-term shirt sponsor of FC Astoria Walldorf. So there you have it. From beaver furs to luxury hotels to software titans, this little German town – and its football club – represent an incredible past. The team are looking to build an even more exciting future every Saturday on the pitch. I wish them all the luck in the world.

Currently playing in National League North, Merthyr Town boast a beautiful badge that tells an incredible story – one of Roman forts, religious sacrifice and Industrial Revolution engineering brilliance. So, let's do this Welsh town the honour and #GetTheBadgeIn to see what we can find out. The club itself was formed in 1908 and has always played in the English leagues, alongside larger Welsh clubs such as Cardiff, Swansea, Wrexham and Newport. They have competed in both English and Welsh cup competitions, with a highlight coming in 1987 when they won the Welsh Cup and qualified for the European Cup Winners' Cup. There they were drawn against Italian giants Atalanta and, remarkably, beat them in the first leg. Quite the scalp that few clubs outside the top two divisions of English football could ever boast. Remarkably, and wonderfully, they have played their entire history at the same venue – Penydarren Park. There is an image in the National Library of Wales of the team playing against my home team, Ipswich Town, in 1951. Note how the football shirts still looked rather like rugby jerseys, complete with their large collars. The football stadium itself proved to be the key to unlocking one of the earliest chapters in the town's history. The site once housed a Roman fort. Contractors clearing the land to build the ground came across pottery fragments and brickwork, which soon revealed a substantial Roman site containing mosaics, a well and a bathhouse. The Romans had built the fort during their campaigns against the local Welsh Silures tribe. This struggle featured clashes between the tribal leader and warrior Caratacus and the Roman governor of Britain, Publius Ostorius Scapula. Scapula had his work cut out trying to subdue an island of tribes that largely resented their new occupiers. He strengthened Roman authority through centres such as Colchester and St Albans in a bid to extend Roman control across Britain. The Iceni in East Anglia (of Boudicca fame) launched several attacks on Roman forces, while in Wales it was Caratacus who won a number of notable victories and frustrated Roman advances through guerrilla-style warfare, retreating into the Welsh hills before appearing elsewhere to strike again. Eventually, however, the sheer might and persistence of Rome prevailed. Caratacus was captured and the region settled into relative calm. By this point, however, Roman power was beginning to wane and imperial troops were gradually withdrawing. Not before, though, they had introduced Christianity to the local population – a development that would shape the town's future. One thing I was not especially aware of, perhaps because I grew up on the east coast, was that after the Romans left, the power vacuum in Wales and western England led to the phenomenon of Irish raiders attacking – and sometimes settling – across the region, just as the Germanic Saxons were doing on the opposite side of Britain. But it was the presence of Christianity that would result in the event for which the town would become most famous – and from which it would take both its name and football crest. The clue to the town's name lies in those early Christian roots. In Welsh, the word *merthyr* means "martyr" – someone who dies for their faith. Merthyr Tydfil therefore translates roughly as "The Martyrdom of Tydfil", making it one of the few towns in Britain named directly after a religious sacrifice. Tydfil herself was a legendary Welsh saint who is said to have lived during those turbulent years after Roman rule collapsed. According to tradition, she was one of the twenty-four children of Brychan, King of Brycheiniog. Twenty-four children. Poor guy. The story goes that around the year 480, Tydfil and her brother Rhun were killed near the site of the modern town, either by local pagan Welsh groups or by Anglo-Saxon raiders pushing westwards into Britain. In death, Tydfil became a Christian martyr and the settlement that grew around her shrine took her name. The parish church of St Tydfil still stands in the town today and is believed to be where she is buried. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the image that adorns the crest of Merthyr Town F.C. We could stop the story there, but then we'd be missing out on one of the town's most remarkable stories and contributions to the world: iron. Merthyr was blessed with a geographical jackpot. Within a relatively small area sat huge reserves of iron ore, coal and limestone – the three key ingredients needed to produce iron on an industrial scale. Add fast-flowing rivers for power, vast forests for timber and a valley that naturally connected the area to the coast, and you had all the ingredients for this one-time Roman fort and settlement, known primarily for its church, to become a centre of the Industrial Revolution. From the mid-eighteenth century, entrepreneurs began to realise the potential hidden beneath the Welsh hills. What followed was one of the most extraordinary periods of industrial growth anywhere in Britain. Four giant ironworks emerged: Dowlais, Cyfarthfa, Plymouth and Penydarren. By the early nineteenth century they were producing iron on a scale almost unimaginable at the time. At its peak, Merthyr Tydfil was not simply an important industrial town – it was the iron capital of the world. Tens of thousands of workers poured into the valley and the skyline became dominated by furnaces, chimneys and rolling mills. Thomas Carlyle visited in 1850 and described the scene as resembling a vision of Hell itself, with workers labouring amidst smoke, fire and dirt. Yet alongside the grime came innovation. The need to move iron from the valley to the sea led to the construction of the Glamorganshire Canal and later a web of railways that threaded their way through some of the most difficult terrain in Britain. Then, in 1804, engineer Richard Trevithick successfully ran the world's first steam locomotive on rails. His machine hauled iron, wagons and passengers almost ten miles along the Merthyr Tramroad. It was slow and the locomotive was unreliable, but none of that really matters. For a few hours on a February day in South Wales, the future arrived. The railways that would reshape Britain, Europe and eventually the world can trace their ancestry back to Merthyr Tydfil. The scale of production was astonishing. In 1844 alone, one Merthyr ironworks exported around 50,000 tons of railway rails to Russia. Those rails stretched eastwards across the vast Russian Empire towards Siberia. Merthyr iron was helping to build the infrastructure of nations thousands of miles away. The town's influence had become global. And nowhere demonstrates that influence better than a city now at the centre of modern headlines – Donetsk, Ukraine. In 1869, a Welsh industrialist named John Hughes left Merthyr and travelled to the coalfields of what was then the Russian Empire. What he found reminded him of South Wales: rich seams of coal, abundant iron ore and huge industrial potential. Hughes brought Welsh engineers, miners and ironworkers with him and founded a new ironworks and settlement. The town that grew around it became known as Hughesovka – literally "Hughes's Town". Over time, the name evolved into Donetsk (you can see the ironworks in the image - before the Russians destroyed it). The industrial community that grew around Hughes's settlement would eventually give rise to one of Ukraine's most famous football clubs – FC Shakhtar Donetsk. Shakhtar, appropriately enough, means "coal miner". So the story of Merthyr does not end in South Wales. The expertise developed in its furnaces helped build an industrial city more than 2,000 miles away on the edge of the Eurasian steppe. Today, Donetsk is known around the world for very different reasons, but its origins lie, surprisingly, in the ironworks, engineers and workers of Merthyr Tydfil. Not bad for a football club badge featuring a fifth-century martyr.

In one of the most picturesque corners of England lies a village of 14,000 people represented by a football team known as the Mitres, with modest local success but bags – or perhaps hatfuls – of personality. They currently sit in Southern League Division One South and are knocking on the door of the Premier Division above. They narrowly lost in the play-offs last season and finished sixth this season. Another big push next year could get them into the seventh tier of English football, just one step away from National League South and the exposure that would bring. There is one main story to tell here. The mitre. The bishop's hat. But it is so much more than that. So let's pay the Mitres the respect they deserve and #GetTheBadgeIn. Let's start with the name – Bishop's Cleeve. "Cleeve" is derived from the Old English clif, meaning cliff, and was first recorded nearly 1,200 years ago. A cliff because the settlement sits at the foot of a number of large hills and escarpments, all part of the wider Cotswold Escarpment – a limestone ridge that has historically helped separate England and Wales. Cleeve Hill and Nottingham Hill both offer excellent views across the Severn Valley and into nearby Wales. Its natural defensive features were not lost on the Iron Age Britons 2,500 years ago. At the summit of Nottingham Hill sits The Camp, one of the country's largest Iron Age hill forts. It spans around 120 acres and, in its heyday, comprised several rows of earthworks topped with timber palisades. Inside stood roundhouses alongside storage pits for grain and livestock enclosures. Access to the site would have been funnelled through a narrow entrance easily overlooked by the defenders. Today the local golf course has been built into one corner of its remains... clearly the locals still appreciate a good bunker... (...I'm quite proud of that). Its importance was recognised by the Romans when they arrived, and they built a fortification nearby. When the Saxons came, they established the village at the base of the cliff, and they were the first to record its name. In the ninth century it gained the title "Bishop's" as the land fell under the control of the Bishop of Worcester, and with that came the bishop's mitre that adorns the club's badge today. The Bishops' badge has the mitre on top and ten red spots which come from the family crest of Godfrey Giffard, an influential medieval Bishop of Worcester whose heraldic symbols were later adopted by the diocese. The red circles were originally a family emblem but later came to be associated with the Ten Commandments in Christian tradition. So, on that note, let's talk church for a bit and explain exactly what this means. The Diocese of Worcester encompasses 169 parishes, including Bishop's Cleeve. It was established during the Anglo-Saxon period around 680 CE. While the internal structure of the Church may be enough to bore most modern people, it was exceptionally important for most of its history. The Church wasn't just an old building you visited occasionally for a funeral. It was the region's largest landowner and employer. Local peasants would often have been required to work at least one day a week – sometimes more – on church-owned land for free. The produce grown was then taken to the local tithe barn, with the tithe being a compulsory annual payment made to the Church. Today, that tithe barn, with its beautiful timber ceilings and stonework, hosts weddings and Zumba classes. For most of its history, however, it housed the surplus produce from church lands before it was sold, generating considerable wealth for the Church. Failure to work on church lands or pay the tithe could result in a one-way ticket to hell – or so people were told. The Church reinforced this message through sermons, stained-glass windows and paintings depicting the fiery eternity awaiting anyone who neglected their duties. Not a bad little business model. It ensured that the Church remained at the centre of economic and political power for centuries. Indeed, it was the exploitation of this system by Rome that contributed to England's first great "Brexit". The Bishopric of Worcester, for example, was at times held by absentee Italian bishops who never set foot in England but nevertheless collected the income it generated. In that environment, I suspect even I, an ardent pro-European, would have found myself siding with the Brexiters of the day, demanding that England leave this rotten system and forge a new direction – and a new religion – of its own. The Church of England was born during the English Reformation of the 1530s, helped in no small part by Henry VIII's determination to marry Anne Boleyn and his frustration at the Pope's refusal to grant him a divorce. The Bishopric of Worcester subsequently fell to a man named John Hooper, a native of nearby Gloucester. As a young man he embraced the new ideas of Protestantism and travelled across Europe to learn from its leading thinkers. He returned only once England had begun to follow a similar path. He was appointed bishop and quickly set about reforming the diocese. During an early inspection, he discovered that of the 311 clergy under his authority, 168 could not recite the Ten Commandments. By all accounts, he was a good bishop. He sent the profits of the bishopric to the Crown and lived modestly. He also married – something Catholic bishops were not permitted to do. Furthermore, he wrote to the King's advisers expressing concern about rising living costs and the hardship they were causing the poor. However, all of this changed with the accession of Mary I, Henry VIII's Catholic daughter. She slammed the country's religious reforms into reverse, and radicals like Hooper quickly found themselves in her sights. He was removed from office, imprisoned for his Protestant beliefs and eventually burned at the stake. Because it was an extremely cold and windy February morning, the wood used for the pyre failed to catch fire properly. The fire had to be relit multiple times, making the execution a drawn out and agonising ordeal. The site today in Gloucester marked with a monument to this 'martyr'. He was one of around 300 Protestants executed during Mary's reign, earning her the nickname "Bloody Mary" – a reputation preserved by generations of Protestant historians, who were perhaps less eager to discuss the even greater number of deaths associated with rulers such as Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Today, Bishop's Cleeve is a much more peaceful place, with little religious tension in the air. The only thing in the air nowadays is the modern aerospace industry. The nearby industrial estate hosts a small but significant cluster of aviation companies, including the American giant General Electric. From its base in Bishop's Cleeve, GE helps maintain Emirates' vast fleet of Boeing 777 aircraft. The company is responsible for electrical systems that keep these workhorses of the modern world airborne and safe. So there you have it. Bishop's Cleeve take quite a story onto the pitch every Saturday – from Iron Age fort builders to religious reformers to aerospace engineers.

For the life of me, I thought I'd already written a post on Aldershot when I completed the National League teams, but I must have just done the research and then never actually got round to writing it. So I owe the club an apology, especially because, of all the clubs in England, this one can boast of representing one of the finest institutions in the land today – the British Army. Before we get to that, Aldershot as a football club is itself quite the tale of battle and comebacks. It's a story of one of English football's most remarkable rebirths. The original Aldershot F.C. was founded in 1926 and spent much of its history in the Football League, achieving promotion from the Fourth Division in 1973 and becoming the first winners of the Football League play-offs in 1987, beating Wolverhampton Wanderers. They adopted a great badge in 1973 too: a red and blue shield – the Army colours – with a cannon on it for "Shots", which had become their nickname, and was entirely suited to a town that was home to the Army's HQ. However, despite this success – and a cracking badge – they ended up more than £1.2 million in debt, and this led to the club's liquidation in March 1992. Determined not to lose football in the town, supporters quickly formed Aldershot Town F.C., a "phoenix club" – a new club rising from the ashes of its predecessor. And so their new badge sort of designed itself: the Phoenix. Beginning life in the Isthmian League, Aldershot Town won the National League title in 2007–08 and were promoted to League Two, marking the first time the new phoenix club had reached the Football League. They spent five seasons there, reaching the League Two play-offs in 2009–10 before being relegated back to the Conference in 2013. In 2025, Aldershot Town achieved one of the greatest moments in its history by winning the FA Trophy at Wembley, defeating Spennymoor Town 3–0 to claim the first major national cup competition in the club's history. However, last season saw the club struggle near the bottom of the National League table, narrowly avoiding relegation. So that's Aldershot the club – and their Phoenix badge. The club was saved by its fans, who have since been rewarded with EFL football and recent Trophy success. But what of the town itself? What of the Army connection? Well, for a long time it was a tiny little place, attracting little more than sheep farmers to the local church's land and little else. A manor house was built, but things only really began to get interesting in the Victorian era. First, a turnpike (toll road) was built through the town, connecting London to Farnborough. The idea of a turnpike was that you paid for a decent road to travel on – and a safe one. But the local operators struggled to protect their paying customers, and highway robbers ("Your money or your life" types), including the famous Dick Turpin, would routinely rob travellers. In fact, so notorious was the area that people reported sightings of the urban legend Spring-Heeled Jack – a half-devil, half-man type creature in a cape who could leap great heights. A sort of Home Counties Batman. He supposedly preyed on passers-by – or at least he did in the new London "penny dreadful" stories that were being printed at the time. However, Aldershot's history was about to change dramatically. In 1854, the British Army realised the value of having land where it could routinely practise and train troops. Such efforts had always been largely ad hoc before; something more professional and permanent was needed. It also had to be close to London, have good transport links, and be cheap enough to buy. In stepped the town of Aldershot. The heathlands were still mostly used by the odd sheep herder. A deal was struck, and in marched the British Army. Wooden huts were built to house the troops, and Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, took a keen interest in the site, funding a permanent library building called The Prince Consort's Library to educate future Army officers. It still stands and is in use today, housing a large collection of military books and records. It also came to house a statue of the Duke of Wellington – the general who defeated Napoleon in 1815 at Waterloo. What is superb about this statue is that the bronze comes from melted-down and recycled French cannons. The Crimean War of the 1850s saw thousands more troops based permanently in Aldershot, and soon those wooden huts gave way to brick barracks. It was such a large and convenient site that it soon came to house the Army leadership too, and it became the home of the British Army – something it remains to this day. During the First World War, having a place like Aldershot became vital to winning the war. In 1914, the British Army had sent almost its entire strength into France in a force known as the British Expeditionary Force, around 100,000 men. Kept historically small by European standards (Britain had the world's largest navy to keep it safe – it didn't really have much need for a large army), it was nonetheless exceptionally well trained. Trained at Aldershot. In the opening battles with the Germans, enemy troops are supposed to have complained to their commanders that the British Army had endless numbers of machine guns because every time they advanced, they were met with a hail of deadly fire. However, it was merely the skill with which the average "Tommy" could wield his Lee-Enfield rifle that convinced the Germans that such accurate and sustained fire could only be achieved by machine-gun trickery. However, despite being superbly skilled, they were also heavily outnumbered and, in just under a year, while they successfully did their job in blocking the German advance into France, most had ended up as casualties. Britain needed a new army. Fast. In stepped General Kitchener, famous at the time for being an old war hero from Sudan. Indeed, one of Sudan's best football clubs today, Al-Merrikh SC, was founded by students from a school set up by Kitchener's army in 1902. Kitchener was given the job of recruiting a new army. It is his face on the famous recruitment poster, and he adopted a new system of promising to keep friends and family together if they joined together – the so-called "Pals Battalions". He was able to recruit more than a million men, most of whom would be trained, at least for part of their training, at Aldershot. Aldershot helped build the modern British Army and played a vital role in Britain's war effort against Imperial Germany. It has been estimated that, at any one time, around 20% of all British soldiers during the First World War were based at Aldershot. During the Second World War, it came to play a similar role, but this time especially for the Canadians. Canadian men who joined the Army travelled to Aldershot to undergo their basic training – 330,000 of them in total. The Canadian Army to this day holds the honorary "Keys to the Town" in acknowledgement of their contributions and sacrifices. More recently, in 1971, two years before the original football club's promotion, the town suffered one of the worst terrorist attacks in British history. The IRA detonated a car bomb outside the barracks, killing seven and injuring nineteen, all civilian support staff. The town itself and the Army barracks had until then been largely open and integrated. This attack caused the barracks to erect walls and fences to separate it from the town proper. Within these fences, known as Aldershot Military Town, are around 10,000 people connected to the Army in one way or another. It also boasts its own football stadium, home to the Army's football team and the site of many inter-regiment games and tournaments. So there we have it. Aldershot. One of the most important and influential towns in the country. And, just like the phoenix on their badge, once again their team is looking to make another comeback. In April 2026, former Premier League goalkeeper Scott Davies, who had played for Aldershot in his early career, was appointed manager and tasked with rebuilding the squad. Since taking charge, Davies has moved quickly to recruit new players and reshape the team – 12 new signings so far at the time of writing, and we are still only in July. Much like the club itself, a good number of those players are themselves also enjoying a rebirth and looking to reignite their careers once more. Let's see what happens. Up The Shots.

Middlesbrough. I’ll be honest. I’ve delayed doing this badge because it just looked a bit too straightforward. A lion. It would come from the crest of some local lord – and that would be it. Aha – not quite. Well, sort of. But that’s only one tiny bit of it. This lion tells a tale that stretches from before the Norman invasion right up to the Industrial Revolution and makes it instantly one of my favourite badges – so, without further ado, let’s do Middlesbrough FC the honour, and #GetTheBadgeIn. Let’s begin, as we often do, with the name – as that one predates most of what follows. Middle Borough. As the name suggests, it alludes to it being in the middle of two points. In this case, halfway between the two monastic sites at Whitby and Durham – the small village became home to a priory, presumably offering an overnight stay to monks making the trek between the two sites. 800 years after its founding, in 1801, it had reached the staggering population of just 25 people. Nobody would have ever heard of it for most of English history. However, that isn’t to say it was not involved in the wider story arc of England – and its northerly Scottish neighbours. Because it very much was – and this leads us to the origin of that lion. It is, in heraldry speak, a lion rampant (which simply means it is stood up). Taken, in this instance, from the family crest of the Brus family. Originally French (Norman), they came over with William the Conqueror in 1066. Following William’s defeat of Harold Godwinson, King of the Saxons, with the famous arrow in the eye, he set about parcelling up England and giving bits of it to his Norman mates. The Brus (or Brix, in French) were one of them. New English real estate in the North opened up a few years after the Battle of Hastings as William set about solving the ‘problem’ of Northern England being so difficult to manage – by butchering them all. This genocide became known as the Harrying of the North – all the Saxons (or often Vikings, that far north) were removed from their lands and the Norman nobles came in. The Brus were given the lands in and around modern-day Middlesbrough and a red lion rampant was the family crest – and therefore became associated with the region. If Brus sounds a touch familiar, it is because the family didn’t stop in the North East of England but moved up into Scotland. Their most famous son became Robert the Bruce, the King of Scotland who famously led the Scots to victory over the English at the Battle of Bannockburn and secured Scotland’s independence, cementing his place as one of the most important figures in British history. His state at Stirling today looks down on that battlefield - and you can see his coat of arms on the statue base. So, when people say ‘isn’t the Middlesbrough badge just the Scottish badge? … well, it sort of is… although the Scottish badge came first – it was already the Scottish crown’s symbol before the Bruce family took control – and the Bruce family adopted the symbol as their own – which in turn meant it also applied to its lands in the North East. Which is why – nearly a millennia later – Middlesbrough FC fly the Brus family crest today every time they take the field. However, we haven’t even really got to the main part of the story yet – Middlesbrough, as it currently stands, only exists because of coal. And rail. Specifically, a very famous railway. Back in 1801, Middlesbrough was little more than a farmstead and a handful of cottages. Twenty-five people. That was it. Not twenty-five thousand. Twenty-five. The problem – or opportunity, depending on your perspective – was that County Durham was sitting on vast coal reserves. Coal was becoming the black gold of the Industrial Revolution and somebody needed to get it from the mines to the ships that would carry it around Britain and beyond. Enter a Quaker businessman named Joseph Pease. Pease was a banker, mine owner and, crucially, one of the driving forces behind the Stockton and Darlington Railway – the world's first public railway to use steam locomotives. In 1828, he sailed up the River Tees looking for somewhere to build new coal-loading facilities connected to the railway. What he found was Middlesbrough. Or rather, the place that would become Middlesbrough. Pease and a group of fellow investors bought more than 500 acres of land and set about creating an entirely new settlement. Coal staithes were built on the riverbank, houses were constructed for workers, and a branch line linked the new port directly to the Stockton and Darlington Railway. It wasn't a medieval market town that slowly grew over centuries. It wasn't a Roman settlement. It wasn't an ancient port. It was a Victorian business venture. And it worked. Spectacularly. Within a few years the tiny village was handling so much traffic that new docks had to be built. The railway brought coal to the river. The river carried coal to the world. Money flowed back the other way. The transformation was astonishing. Middlesbrough's population exploded from around 40 people in 1829 to over 7,000 by 1851. It became known as the "Infant Hercules" because it seemed to have sprung from nowhere and immediately started throwing its weight around. And if all this railway talk sounds familiar, that's because Middlesbrough's neighbours at Darlington F.C. still proudly display a steam locomotive on their badge today (and a quaker hat - in honour of the local quakers, like Pease, who funded the whole thing) - it is Locomotion No. 1, the famous steam locomotive designed by George Stephenson and built by Robert Stephenson which first ran the Darlington-Stockton railway. So important was Joseph Pease to the story that Middlesbrough erected a statue in his honour. It still stands today, watching over the town that he quite literally helped build from scratch. But Middlesbrough's growth was only just beginning. Because if coal and rail created the town, iron turned it into a giant. Y In 1841, Henry Bolckow and John Vaughan established ironworks on Teesside. Then, in 1850, rich seams of ironstone were discovered in the nearby Eston Hills. Suddenly Middlesbrough had everything it needed: coal for fuel, ironstone for smelting, a railway network to move materials and a port to export the finished products. The result was extraordinary. Pig iron production surged. Blast furnaces multiplied. Smoke stacks dominated the skyline. By the 1870s Middlesbrough was producing roughly a third of Britain's pig iron output and had earned itself a new nickname: Ironopolis. The Iron-Smelling Centre of the World. Well... technically "Iron-Smelting". Although I suspect "Iron-Smelling" was also accurate if the wind was blowing in your direction. This was no longer the sleepy priory village that had spent centuries sitting quietly between Whitby and Durham. This was one of the beating industrial hearts of the British Empire. The iron and steel of Middlesbrough helped build cities across the globe. By 1900, the population had reached around 90,000 people. The town had received its Royal Charter, gained its own Member of Parliament and become one of the most important industrial centres in Britain. Yet Middlesbrough's connection with the wider world didn't begin with iron, steel or even railways. Because before Teesside was exporting pig iron, it was exporting explorers. Just a few miles away, in the village of Great Ayton, a young farmer's son named James Cook was growing up. Before he became Captain Cook, before Australia, before New Zealand, before Hawaii, Cook spent his formative years working on Whitby collier ships carrying coal from the North East down to London. These weren't glamorous vessels. They were workhorses. Floating coal wagons. But they were sturdy, reliable and capable of handling the rough waters of the North Sea. More importantly, they taught Cook navigation, seamanship and chart-making. In many ways, the skills that allowed him to map huge parts of the Pacific Ocean were learned while hauling coal from the same coastline that helped create Middlesbrough itself. Without coal, there is probably no Captain Cook. Cook became one of the most important explorers in human history, charting vast stretches of the Pacific and helping to transform European understanding of the world. His connection to the area remains so strong that the star, or estoile, associated with him was later incorporated into Middlesbrough's coat of arms. Not bad for a lad who started out sailing on coal boats. So there we have it - so far - Rails. Bridges. Ships. Factories. Machinery. Explorers. And their club has proudly represented its heritage. In footballing terms, Middlesbrough have spent most of their history bouncing between the top two divisions, but their greatest achievements include winning the Football League Cup in 2004, reaching the final of the UEFA Cup Final two years later, and twice finishing as runners-up in the old First Division before the Premier League era. They've also produced a remarkable number of England internationals and, despite never winning the league title, remain one of the most successful clubs never to have been crowned champions of England. They've had some great players over the years: including Juninho Paulista, Mark Viduka, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, Gaizka Mendieta, Stewart Downing and club captain Gareth Southgate, who helped deliver the most successful era in Middlesbrough's history. It is quite the story. Much of that story was told at Ayresome Park. Opened in 1903, Ayresome became one of English football's great traditional grounds. It hosted matches during the 1966 World Cup and witnessed some of the finest moments in the club's history. Generations of Middlesbrough supporters passed through its turnstiles before the club finally said goodbye in 1995. That year Middlesbrough moved to the Riverside Stadium. Fittingly, the club moved back towards the river that had created the town in the first place. The Riverside was one of the first new generation stadiums built following the Taylor Report and represented a new chapter for both club and town. Yet Middlesbrough ensured that part of Ayresome Park came with them. The famous Ayresome Gates were relocated to the Riverside and still stand there today, linking the club's past to its present. Which brings us back to the badge. Because while the lion reminds us of Norman knights, medieval lordships and the family of Robert the Bruce, the very existence of Middlesbrough Football Club owes far more to Joseph Pease, the Stockton and Darlington Railway, the coalfields of Durham and the furnaces of Ironopolis. The town itself tells the story of how modern Britain was built. Quite the team.

Nestled between the redwood forests and large vineyards of Northern California’s wine country sits an ice rink named for, and built by, Charles M. Schulz – the creator of a little cartoon known as Snoopy. Snoopy’s Home Ice houses Santa Rosa’s semi-professional Santa Rosa Growlers. Their badge tells a tale of the local area – a part of the state of California that has still retained much of its natural beauty and wildlife. As such, they can help us tell another part of the California story, a part that links into the pre-European world and helps create the foundations for what was to come. So, without further ado, let’s #GetTheBadgeIn for the Santa Rosa Growlers. Let’s begin with the bear. The California grizzly bear was the most famous resident of this part of the world (and appears on the California state flag as a result). The California grizzly bear once roamed throughout Sonoma County and much of the state, becoming such an important part of California's identity that it was placed at the centre of the state flag following the 1846 Bear Flag Revolt (when locals raised a bear flag and declared independence – two weeks later the US Army moved in and claimed the territory for the United States). Although the grizzly was driven to extinction in California by the early twentieth century, it remains a powerful symbol of strength, independence, resilience and frontier spirit. Today, black bears still roam (and are increasing in number) around Northern California in and around the nature reserves not too far from Santa Rosa. The bear also connects the area to its pre-European history. The local Pomo peoples held bears in high regard. They were famous for a tradition of having ‘Bear Doctors’ – powerful spiritual leaders believed to possess special connections with bears and bear spirits. According to Pomo traditions recorded by anthropologists, Bear Doctors would wear bearskins, imitate the movements and sounds of bears, and perform ceremonies believed to harness a bear's strength and supernatural power. Some accounts suggest they acted as healers, while others describe them as feared figures capable of using spiritual power for protection or vengeance. So that’s the bear. What of the redwoods that you can also see on the team’s badge? The area was (and in large parts still is) covered in large trees called ‘coast redwoods’ – they are the tallest living organisms on Earth. They can reach 370 feet in height and live for over 2,000 years. Regrettably, during the nineteenth century much of these forests were felled by loggers looking for materials to help build the newly expanding cities of California. If you look more closely at the badge, however, you will see one last feature – the traditional wine bottle right in the centre (at least... I think that’s what it is? If anyone from the club or region is reading this, please let me know...). If it is, it is a direct reference to Santa Rosa's location in the heart of California Wine Country. Sonoma County is one of the most celebrated wine-producing regions in the United States, with a history of commercial winemaking stretching back to the nineteenth century, when settlers established the first vineyards in the region. The fertile valleys, Mediterranean climate and generations of winemakers have helped establish Sonoma as a globally respected centre for viticulture, attracting millions of visitors each year. Even today, the town’s main tourism website markets itself as being in the middle of ‘Wine Country’, and there are dozens of hotels and homes where you can stay as part of wine-tasting experiences or nature getaways from the larger cities to the south. So there you have it. Grizzly bears in tune with local spirit guides, the tallest forests in the world and some of the world’s finest wine – oh – and Snoopy. What more could a team want to carry onto the rink every weekend? Love it.

I came across the club via a social media post claiming faux outrage over an "ice cream" inspired away shirt. What I discovered is a community and volunteer-run club that is doing extraordinary things in the very heart of one of the USA's greatest cities. And one I have instantly fallen in love with. They claim to be the oldest community-run club in America and I'm simply going to quote, at length, their mission statement from their website - because it is genuinely inspiring (and when it comes to stuff like this I am probably the most cynical person on the planet). It goes like this: "San Francisco City FC was founded on the principle that a local sports team should be an organisation ingrained in and reflective of the San Francisco community, rather than a business used for the profit of a select few. This means allowing fans to have control over how the club is operated and using sports as a vehicle to improve our city. The SF City FC Members Organisation pledges to do this through charity events, volunteer hours, free youth soccer programs, fundraising, and democratically representing our members’ interests. Our goal is to grow in San Francisco and have both men’s and women’s professional teams, as well as free youth teams at every age level." I love this. This is 100% what football should be about - inspiring the local community to come together and better itself. Formed in 2001, the club today competes in USL2 - technically the fourth tier (?) of US football - it is a huge tier of 150 semi-professional clubs across the USA. But the newly elected mayor of SF has just turfed SFCFC out of their beautiful little stadium in the city's main park - to make way for his own (and his financial backer's) per project - a MLS 2 team (They've called it MLS Next Pro - which is a terrible name). Which is a chronic shame. Because there is little more SF than this team. Taking inspiration from the German giants that have remained globally competitive while retaining fan control, they run the 50+1 ownership structure where fans will always own a majority stake in the club, with larger private investors welcome on board - but never overriding the fans. That community feel comes through on their website and socials - in between offering free football classes (they call it "soccer" for some odd reason) they also put out warnings about ICE agents, Trump's Gestapo, being spotted in certain areas and warning locals to avoid their cruel, draconian and usually illegal brand of vigilante/racist justice. Well done, that club. In addition their mascot is called Foggy (after the famous fog that rolls in off the Pacific and funnels through the Golden Gate). And their long term sponsor is the San Francisco Municipal Railway. All very wholesome. So, enough of the praise. Let's get to the history behind the badge here - and the ice cream shirt... (which I am about to order...) Sutro Tower They have had a recent redesign which has stripped away the icon showing the famous Golden Gate Bridge and focused instead on the other icon on the badge - the Sutro Tower. This three-legged, three-pronged, trident-looking thing sits atop a hill to the west of the city - allowing it to broadcast over the hilly terrain in that region and down into the city itself. For a long time it was the highest structure in the city - a landmark visible for miles around. It was built on the former property of the Sutro family, which owned a mansion overlooking the city. Adolph Sutro The Sutros themselves are worth a mention - their fortune began in the mid-1800s with Adolph Sutro, who had moved to San Francisco from Germany. He had a shop selling cigars and was struggling to pay rent when suddenly silver was discovered in the Comstock Lode - mountains about 2-3 days' carriage ride away in Nevada. Sutro Tunnel Plan Adolph packed his stock and moved out there - hoping to sell cigars to the miners. On arrival, however, he quickly learned of the problems the miners were having with underground flooding. Sutro saw a solution. He was going to dig a six-mile drainage tunnel. Sutro Tunnel He was able to muster up the financing by selling stock certificates in a new "Sutro Tunnel Company". The tunnel itself was then able to sell its services to individual mining companies who could connect to it, drain their mines, and reap the rewards. It could drain four million gallons of water a day and companies paid an average of $10,000 a day to use it. Sutro Baths Sutro became one of the wealthiest men in the West. He doubled that money and then some by ploughing the gains into San Francisco property and land - which also became a boom commodity. With the riches, he invested heavily in the city, building the Sutro Baths - at the time the world's largest indoor swimming complex. His legacy can be seen today in the Sutro district - and in the name of one of SF's most iconic landmarks. The radio tower itself was instrumental in bringing clear AM, FM and then TV broadcasting to the city. Owned by a consortium of broadcasters, it is operated on a non-profit basis to enable multiple companies to use it. America ushered in the mass-entertainment TV age - and while we all remember the Hollywood studios and superstars, it was a work team lugging large pylons up San Francisco's biggest hill that really allowed the format to thrive. So that's the badge. What of the 2025-26 shirt that led me down this little rabbit hole in the first place? Well, that is a homage to one of the city's most famous culinary exports... and it is also the most American thing you can imagine - the ice cream sandwich. In 1928, a man by the name of George Whitney placed a scoop of creamy vanilla ice cream between two freshly baked old-fashioned oatmeal cookies, and then dipped the sandwich into dark chocolate. It caught on almost immediately, with early adopters claiming "This is it!" - and Whitney adopted the phrase, and so was born the famous "IT'S-IT" Ice Cream Sandwich. Playland-at-the-Beach It was sold for almost four decades exclusively inside San Francisco’s legendary Playland-at-the-Beach amusement park. The park boasted rides, games, shows and other attractions - and the IT'S-IT ice cream provided the fuel for generations of Californians to make the most of the rides (it also gives flashbacks to that amazing video game Theme Park - where if you put the ice cream shop before the roller coaster everyone threw up their ice cream cones after getting off the ride. Side note: the man behind this innovation was a kid called Demis Hassabis, who now runs Google DeepMind and has a Nobel Prize). IT'S-IT ice cream sandwich When Playland was demolished in the early 1970s, IT’S-IT sandwiches began being individually handmade in a small shop in San Francisco’s SOMA district under new ownership. The hunger for IT’S-IT exploded. In order to quench San Francisco’s craving for the ice cream treat, the company relocated to a larger facility in 1976 and today they export pre-packaged versions across the USA. So there you have it. San Francisco City FC. A fantastic community club. Paying homage to iconic television broadcasting infrastructure, cigar-selling silver mine-draining philanthropists - and quite possibly the most inelegant, yet somehow superbly authentic, San Francisco desserts of all time. One of my new favourite clubs. Uppa City.

I went to university in Essex and have been fortunate enough (…) to have spent my formative years surrounded by Hammers fans. So it has been with some delight that I’ve been reminding them of the cost to the taxpayer that their recent relegation has cost us (they have an incredibly generous rental agreement with the local council on the Olympic Stadium, which means that upon relegation their rent goes down by roughly £2.5 million a year! – agreed to by Boris Johnson – so another amazing legacy of his…) Alas. The East End has produced plenty of things over the years. Sailors. Dockers. Market traders. Gangsters. Politicians. The odd world champion boxer. And, of course, West Ham United. The Hammers. The Irons. And a bunch of really loud University of Essex fans during the 2003 play-off semi-finals. Not that I’m still bitter. The club's badge is one of the most recognisable in English football. Two giant crossed hammers. Claret and blue. Job done. Some sort of factory thing. Won’t take long to explain it. Or so I thought. Because tucked away within the modern badge is something I bet most fans don’t even know – the shape of the shield itself ties the club to both its own past and Britain’s past as the heart of a mighty maritime empire. The shield isn’t actually a shield. It is the cross-section of a ship's hull. Not just any ship either. HMS Warrior. The same ship you can still visit today at the Portsmouth Dock Yards. Now we're talking. Maritime history. Much more my thing. To understand why they have the Royal Navy’s first ironclad stitched to their shirts, we need to head back to the old Docklands. The industrial East End. A world of cranes, foundries, shipyards and men whose jobs involved hitting things with hammers for twelve hours a day. Swearing. Gambling. Making rude jokes about their wives. Proper London. In the nineteenth century, the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company was the biggest shipbuilder on the River Thames. At its peak it employed thousands of workers and occupied huge sites around Bow Creek and Canning Town. Among its many achievements was the construction of HMS Warrior. When Warrior was launched in 1860, it changed naval warfare forever. Before Warrior, most warships were made from wood. Warrior was made from iron. Before Warrior, warships relied primarily on sail. Warrior had steam engines. Before Warrior, the Royal Navy ruled the waves through centuries of tradition and the massed (and masted) ranks of disciplined crews still basking in Nelson’s glory. Dreaming of a day when they’d be ordered to Engage the Enemy More Closely and board French ships, slipping on bloody decks and swinging across the rigging. But Warrior announced that the future had arrived. Warfare was no longer about coming alongside your enemy and blasting them to pieces, hoping your gun crews were more disciplined than their opponents – that they could fire faster despite being deafened by their own cannons, pulverised by incoming cannonballs and sliced to pieces by razor-sharp fragments of decking and hull zipping through the air. Remember, one lad's job was simply to keep the sawdust fresh on the floor to soak up the blood. Warrior was the beginning of a new world – one that would quickly lead to explosive shells, radio, radar and cold hard steel – and the Royal Navy was once again at the forefront of it. And the men who built her? Many of them worked for the same company that would eventually give birth to West Ham United. The club began life in 1895 as Thames Ironworks F.C. It was founded by shipbuilders, boilermakers, riveters, engineers and labourers who were among the most skilled craftsmen and technicians on Earth. The crossed hammers on the badge represent the riveting hammers used by those workers. That is where the nicknames "The Hammers" and "The Irons" come from. Which brings us back to the badge. When West Ham redesigned it ahead of their move to the London Stadium, they removed the castle (which referred to Boleyn Castle – a local landmark near their old ground, the Boleyn Ground) but retained the hammers and adopted the hull-shaped shield as a tribute to HMS Warrior and the Thames Ironworks that built her. But that is only part of the story. Firstly, let’s visit this thing about blowing bubbles. I recently visited the London Stadium and was amused at the bubble machines they wheeled out before the match and seeing the whole crowd singing in unison about bubbles – not exactly the most fearsome of war-cries, and somehow lacking the poignancy of Liverpool’s You’ll Never Walk Alone. So where does it come from? I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles originated as a popular song from the 1918 Broadway musical The Passing Show. It became widely known in Britain through the working-class music halls of London during the 1920s, which picked up the tune and made it popular on this side of the Atlantic. I had always assumed American music was a relatively recent import to Britain, but this proves that working-class Londoners could be humming American hits over a century ago. These music halls were lively venues offering affordable entertainment, where ordinary Londoners enjoyed songs, comedy and variety acts. They were a huge part of urban working-class culture, only really disappearing with the rise of cinema and later television. The last real connection my generation has to that world is probably Bruce Forsyth, who cut his teeth on the remnants of the music-hall circuit in the 1940s and 1950s. The song became linked to West Ham through a local schoolboy nicknamed "Bubbles", whose headmaster would sing it whenever the school team played well. The headmaster happened to be a friend of West Ham manager Charlie Paynter, and the song gradually made its way onto the terraces at Upton Park. In 1999, Hammers supporters set a world record when all 24,000 fans in attendance blew bubbles continuously for one minute. A record nobody has bothered trying to beat (weird...) But still, well done them. So that’s the badge and its shipbuilding past. That’s the song and its music-hall origins. Are we done? Not quite. Because we owe it to history to visit one final character: Arnold Hills. Hills belonged to that old class of Brit – the sort who went to Harrow (like Hills), then Oxford (like Hills), and somehow ended up running vast industrial enterprises while representing England at sport and discovering a lost civilisation before breakfast. Hills himself didn’t quite manage all of that, but nineteenth-century Britain seemed remarkably good at producing wildly talented, outrageously privileged people. Hills was an athlete who represented England at football and won national athletics titles. He was also, of course, the managing director of the Thames Iron Works in Canning Town. Imagine Wayne Rooney simultaneously running one of Europe’s largest manufacturing firms. Unlike many Victorian industrialists, however, Hills took a keen interest in the welfare of his workers. He lived for five years in a small workers' home in Canning Town and ensured the company provided recreational facilities to improve workers’ lives. It was this belief in organised sport as a force for discipline, health and community that led him, alongside foreman Dave Taylor, to found Thames Ironworks F.C. in 1895 – the club that would eventually become West Ham United. Hills provided the financial backing that allowed the club to grow, helping transform a works team into a community institution. Yet he was also a fascinatingly unconventional figure: a committed vegetarian, temperance campaigner and philanthropist. He established the London Vegetarian Society and appointed a young man called Mahatma Gandhi to its board (in the society's first photo you can see him sat on the front row - when he had hair). He set up the Vegetarian Cycling Club, founded a newspaper called The Vegetarian, and helped create the Oriolet Fruitarian Hospital – Britain's first hospital dedicated to treating vegetarians and healing use the power of fruit... …What utter woke nonsense is this!? How many of West Ham’s die-hard supporters, proudly flashing crossed-hammers symbols, know that they owe their existence to a lily-livered vegetarian? I absolutely love it. It makes Dale Vince’s Forest Green Rovers look like gas-guzzling MAGA voters. Superb stuff from the Hammers. I’ll be looking forward to their Arnold Hills anniversary vegan-inspired third shirt. Come on, Hammers. Let’s make this happen. There is almost nothing more British than West Ham. The grit, sweat and clanging steel of the shipyards that helped build and defend an empire, workers who spent weekends singing American songs and getting drunk, all funded by an upper-class eccentric who represented England in sport and promoted a hippy lifestyle. I say again – I absolutely love this club. Up the East End Vegetarians!

Sassuolo – or Unione Sportiva Sassuolo Calcio, to be precise – has recently fallen onto my radar because, a) last season they won promotion back to Serie A and, despite the odds, have managed to survive another year (as an Ipswich fan, clubs that can make this jump hold a certain fascination for me), and b) it was also where Muric, Town's former goalkeeper, spent last season on loan and has just today announced he will be joining on a permanent deal. So... who exactly are Sassuolo? And what can their badge reveal about their origins? Well, they use the classic footballing "Barcelona-style" badge, which is actually quite common around the footballing world as a way of paying homage to the Catalan giants. (Forest Green Rovers in England used a very similar design before their rebrand.) They are the only Serie A team not to represent a provincial capital, with the town itself having only around 40,000 people. Their stadium is actually too small to meet modern Serie A standards, so what was once their home ground is now their training ground. Instead, they share a stadium with Serie B side AC Reggiana, around 20 kilometres away. The stadium, however, has been purchased by Sassuolo's owner – the chemical giant Mapei. Mapei made its fortune from glue. Not the sort you used at primary school, but specialist commercial adhesives that stick everything from lino to kitchen floors, tiles to walls and even Olympic running tracks to the ground. Their products have been used to help repair the Panama Canal, restore the Sistine Chapel and refloor parts of the Kremlin in Moscow. Apparently the reviews say it made putting the floors down quite easy... The company remains owned by the founding Squinzi family, who are renowned for their philanthropy and investment in Italian sport, particularly cycling. So that's the team. What of the badge? The black and green colours make Sassuolo stand out amongst Italian clubs, most of whom seem to favour red, blue, white, or some combination of the three. The club originally played in the colours of the town's coat of arms – yellow and red – but switched to black and green in 1971 for reasons that remain somewhat unclear. One theory (although supposedly debunked) is that an English side called Lancaster Rovers was touring Italy and, after cancelling the remainder of its trip, donated its kits to Sassuolo as an apology. Sassuolo itself features the same symbol on its coat of arms that appears in the upper-left quadrant of the football club's crest: three rocks with two flowers growing from them. This is thought to be a visual pun, something common in heraldry. Sassuolo sounds similar to saxum solum ("rocky soil"), one proposed origin of the town's name. The town's Latin motto translates as "From the rocks, buds" – which is a rather lovely message and metaphor. Especially for a football club that spent most of its existence in Italy's lower leagues before finally flowering into a respectable Serie A side. The town itself sits in the foothills of the Modena region. Its thick clay proved ideal for ceramics and, even today, factories across the area churn out vast quantities of tiles. Around 80% of Italian ceramic tile production comes from the Sassuolo district. It is also famous for its own anise-flavoured liqueur, Sassolino (think Sambuca), first developed by Swiss migrants who settled in the town. St anding in the town centre is the Palazzo Ducale, one of northern Italy's finest Baroque buildings. Originally a fortress, it was transformed into a grand ducal residence in 1634 by Duke Francesco I d'Este. He commissioned leading architects and artists, including Bartolomeo Avanzini and Gaspare Vigarani, and the interior is lavishly decorated with paintings and murals from floor to ceiling. The palace is surrounded by extensive gardens that have been compared to a miniature Versailles, complete with fountains and hunting grounds that once stretched for more than 12 kilometres. Within the grounds is a now ruined 'Peschiera' which apparently was a half theatre-half aquraium (I'm thinking a mediaeval dolphin show...?). So there you have it. Sassuolo. From glue to ceramics, cycling to liqueur, and industry to Baroque elegance. A great deal has flourished in that rocky soil, and this little Italian town with a big heart now has a football club determined to hold its own amongst the giants of Italian football.

One of the best games of football I've ever seen featured Hereford United (the precursor to today's Hereford FC). It was a cold, dark February evening in 2012 and I was at Priestfield in Gillingham. The score finished 5–4, with the Gills coming out on top, but at the 80-minute mark Hereford led 3–2. The next ten minutes, plus stoppage time, were absolute carnage. Unfortunately for United, their luck didn't improve much in the years that followed. Just two years later, they had suffered relegation and insolvency. Fans took it upon themselves to form a phoenix club and, unable to use the exact name of the club that had just vanished, settled on "Hereford FC" with the tagline "Forever United" on their badge. Nicely done, lads. They respawned (to use video game parlance my son would understand) in the Midland Football League, the ninth tier of English football. In the years since, they have battled their way back up, with three consecutive promotions to kick things off, dominating teams with their comparatively huge fanbase for that level. Today they sit in National League North, just within reach of the EFL and restoring their natural position of bobbling around the fourth and fifth tiers of the game. I love seeing these phoenix clubs do well and am currently Googling Hereford kits as we speak to add to my collection. Known as "The Whites" for their home colours, they do look smart when they take to the pitch. However, it is their other nickname, "The Bulls", which grabs your attention first for very obvious reasons. Their badge features a giant bull. From Hereford. The Hereford bull. A selectively bred weapon of economic warfare brought to us by the good people of Herefordshire. Emerging from the county's cattle farms in the mid-1700s, the Hereford would become famous – and vital – to a growing and industrialising nation. The Hereford, with its distinctive white face and red body, is a cattle farmer's dream: hardy, able to survive extremes of temperature, and capable of producing beautifully marbled meat from relatively poor forage. To boot, they tend to have excellent temperaments and are easy to handle. Farmers in and around Hereford could suddenly boost their profits by switching breeds or introducing Herefords to turn empty or exhausted fields into additional revenue. The breed caught on and soon spread globally, but it was in the hills of Herefordshire that the secret was first discovered and refined. Legend has it that the process began with local farmer Benjamin Tomkins and two cows, Pidgeon and Mottle, inherited from his father. This British invention would go on to transform the American West after the Civil War. Herds of longhorns were being driven north from Mexico and, while they were believed to be the best cattle for long-distance ranching, they were no match for the Hereford. The breed proved the equal of the longhorn in terms of endurance while also producing better-quality meat, and farmers across the United States switched. Winning farmers' fair after farmers' fair, the breed quickly won admirers, and the Hereford helped fuel an agricultural revolution in America much as it had done in Britain. An online article from a Montana based agricultural paper calls them the 'Breed the Built the West'. So there you have it. From the stews served in cowboy towns to fine dining tables in Manhattan, and from tinned beef rations during the First World War to modern supermarkets, the Hereford was there. Not bad for a city of 50,000 people nestled amongst the picturesque rolling hills near the Welsh border. Hereford, the city, has a much longer history. First granted city status by Richard I in 1189 (when it was described as being in Wales), the city boasts some beautiful medieval architecture, including the cathedral which houses the ancient Mappa Mundi. The Mappa Mundi is the world's largest surviving medieval map, created around 1300 and displayed in Hereford Cathedral. Rather than serving as a navigational tool, it presents a religious view of the world, combining Biblical stories, classical myths, animals, monsters and medieval beliefs to teach visitors about Christian faith, morality and salvation. It does contain some rather unsavoury imagery. For example, it is not very kind to Jews, showing a horned Moses and a depiction of Jews worshipping the Golden Calf in the form of a Saracen devil. The map also portrays women as inherently sinful, including the wife of Lot being turned into a pillar of salt for gazing back at the city of Sodom. But I suppose these days anything that didn't do this would be called woke, wouldn't it? Before we wrap up this little investigation into Hereford FC there is one more aspect about Hereford's place in the British imagination that we need to mention. Sitting just outside the city is a little military base known as Stirling Lines. There you will find the headquarters of a little British army regiment known as the Special Air Service. The SAS. Britain's world famous elite fighting unit that has been at the cutting edge of every conflict from the Second World War onwards. The base took the name 'Stirling' in honour of David Stirling, the founder of the regiment. When the British were fighting the Italians and Germans in North Africa it was Stirling, and some like minded courage/crazy eccentrics that founded the Long Range Desert Group. They would drive out into the desert for days at a time and remerge at night behind enemy lines and conduct raids on supply lines and depots. This unit was so successful that it became a regiment in its own right - and in the 1960s it moved to Hereford. The rolling countryside is perfect for military training while the city is still close enough to the major urban hubs that the regiment can get most places pretty quickly if called upon. So there you have it. Hereford. Medieval city. Keeper of maps. Fuelled the Industrial Revolution. Home to the most famed special forces regiment in the world - and more importantly - a newly resurgent football club trying to find its way back to the EFL.

Siena FC SSD was formed in 1904, when the club was founded in Siena as Società Studio e Divertimento (“Society for Study and Entertainment”) by a group that broke away from an existing sporting club. Eventually, they would evolve into Associazione Calcio Siena (“Siena Football Association”). Siena is a relatively small city but with a very long history. Their football team, perhaps initially stifled by its smaller recruitment pool compared to its larger rivals, spent much of its history in the lower divisions. However, they undertook a remarkable rise during the late 1990s and early 2000s, winning the Serie B title in 2002–03 and earning promotion to Serie A for the first time. They spent nine seasons competing against the giants of Italian football, clubs like Juventus F.C., A.C. Milan and Inter Milan. However, trying to keep up with them was difficult, and financial problems and bankruptcy hit the club multiple times, leading to rebirths under new ownership. Today, Siena still retains passionate local support but currently plays in Serie D, the fourth tier of Italian football. A team like Siena, then, reflects its city in more ways than one, because the city too had an incredible past and achieved amazing things, especially during the early Renaissance period. Siena, at its peak, was the rival of Florence — its northern neighbour — in terms of wealth and Renaissance splendour. The club’s black-and-white colours come directly from Siena’s medieval coat of arms and flag, but it is their wolf-and-child icon that requires deeper investigation. Of course, anyone who knows anything about the Romans (or Italian football) will instantly recognise it as the symbol of Romulus and Remus — the mythical founders of Rome. It is most famous these days for being the badge of AS Roma. We all know the story — the two brothers were left in a basket at birth and raised by a wolf. But what, then, is this symbol doing on the football team of a city nearly 250km away? Well, there is a very strong connection: Siena’s own founding myth claims the city was established by Senius and Aschius, sons of Remus and nephews of Romulus, who fled Rome after Remus was killed. According to the legend, they carried with them the statue of the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus (pictured), which later became one of Siena’s enduring symbols. The story also claims they arrived on black-and-white horses, supposedly inspiring Siena’s famous black-and-white coat of arms, known as the Balzana. The city was a Roman military outpost for a long while, sitting as it does on the strategically important Via Francigena — the pilgrimage route that ran from Canterbury in England, through France and then down into Italy and finally to Rome. It stretches 3000km in total and, even today, is promoted by the EU as a fantastic walking route for those who really want to get to know Europe (I can only hope that, by the time I retire, I still have the stamina — and funds — for such an adventure!). After the fall of the Roman Empire, Italy initially fell mostly under Church control but then fragmented into various states as local lords, merchants and bankers campaigned for more of a say in affairs — and Siena became such a state. In the 12th century, the Republic of Siena was founded. Siena, blessed with its strategic location and surrounded by fertile lands, quickly became a centre for wheat, salt, wool and wine. This, in turn, led to the emergence of money lenders who could provide capital to those wanting to cash in on this flourishing trade. One such group formed the Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, which is still going today and is the world’s oldest bank still headquartered in its beautiful building in Siena. Money flowed in and, with it, the ability of locals to offer patronage to the city and the arts. The stunning Siena Cathedral was built in the 12th century (and shares a black-and-white colour palette) and was worked on by some of the great Renaissance architects and artists, including Donatello. Meanwhile, the city centre became dominated by Piazza del Campo — one of the greatest town squares anywhere in Europe. It has hosted the biannual Palio di Siena horse race around the edge of the square since the 17th century. The event today is more of a festival, with parades and officials in full medieval dress, making it an incredible spectacle. The city would host numerous Renaissance artists and its most famous remaining work sits inside the town hall — entitled The Allegory of Good and Bad Government. The frescoes adorn the walls of the room where local officials would make their decisions. It was intended as a constant reminder of their responsibilities and the consequences of their decisions — a fantastic tribute to the ongoing humanist movement that spurred the Renaissance, and a reminder that it was human decisions that affected human affairs. So there we have it: Siena FC SSD. While they may today sit in the fourth tier, they are a perfect package of culture, tradition and commerce, deeply rooted in both the Roman and Renaissance past of Italy. You could hardly find a more perfect package of Italianness. I am sure their football team will rise once again. You can bank on it. Enjoyed discovering the history behind this badge? This story also appears in Wolsey Academy's Renaissance History curriculum, where students explore the people, places, ideas and events that shaped the Renaissance through enquiry-based lessons, projects and historical investigations. Teachers can browse the full collection at www.wolseyacademy.com/shop and receive 50% off any lesson bundle using the exclusive #GetTheBadgeIn code GTBI50.