cardiffcity.no

No red dawn, but dark clouds on the blue sky 17/05/2012

Kudos to the Malaysians for quickly reacting to the fans opposition against the re-branding by scrapping all plans for red as our colour and dragon in our badge! Having reiterated their commitment to the club after the board meeting earlier this week I hope the owners will now start addressing all the financial issues clouding the blue sky.

It’s of course disturbing to hear about City’s bad financial state, but those problems wouldn’t have gone away simply by changing our colour and badge. Other measures are needed and surely will be put in place.

A more balanced picture than the re-branding being a non-negotiable condition for the Malaysians further investment in the club is now being drawn, but I maintain that it was a very, very bad idea to even consider changing the club colours to red!

Pro-re-branding voices keep asking the question if playing in red with a dragon on the shirt in the Premier League isn’t better than playing in the Championship in blue and with a Bluebird on the chest or even face extinction. I can hand on heart say that I would never favour re-branding even if a place in the Premier League was guaranteed as a result. Premier League isn’t what football and Cardiff City it’s all about (although it might seem like it now a days), and playing there in red with a dragon on the chest would just not be the Cardiff City, the Bluebirds, that I support.

If Asians don’t buy Cardiff City merchandise because of the blue colour, then so be it, and they should support someone else. Just like the Malaysians shouldn’t have invested in Cardiff City in the first place if colour and brand means that much to them. To me it’s as simple as that.

Malaysia on the front and back of the shirt combined with Malaysia all over the stadium etc. should at least be enough to entice Malaysians to buy a Cardiff shirt, and if not then small sale in the owners’ native country is probably more down to Cardiff City being way behind a club like Manchester United for sporting reasons than anything else.

There have been a lot of creative proposals from fans trying to make some sort of compromise between the blue Cardiff City Bluebird heritage and the Malaysians wishes for a red dragon future. Some of the proposals I must admit look pretty nice, but I dislike mixing too much red and blue. Blue, white and to some extent yellow are our main colours.

Proposal for a new red and blue Cardiff City shirt by Cardiff supporter “Daniel M”.

Maybe we’re heading for a vote like Argentinian side Banfield did on which design should be used?!

Supporters of a team have a special bond, and what I’m sad to see happening now is a division between those in favour of the re-branding plans and embracing the “redification” of Cardiff City and those opposed to the re-branding. This is a very unfortunate consequence of recent events, and far more disturbing than Asians not becoming Cardiff City fans.

The 1927 FA Cup win naturally has a very strong position in Cardiff City history. Someone pointed out that the team wore a completely different badge then, but that was the City of Cardiff’s crest and so made sense.

A replica of Cardiff City’s 1927 shirt as worn during the FA Cup final win over Arsenal with a different badge than the current.

With TG now back in Malaysia to discuss the way forward with Vincent Tan and others, it’ll be interesting to see what happens and how this close season will evolve.

Hopefully we’ll soon be able to focus on how those millions of pounds being made available to Malky Mackay for buying new players are going to be spent!