The club's programme for the start of the 1981/82 season was titled 'Parader' and the cover featured a silhouette of a floodlight and stand. Few City fans realised that designer Peter Bell, an old Avenue fan, had used a photograph of Park Avenue for the design. Thankfully a new Bantams programme from December 1981 saved any further embarrassment!
Stafford Heginbotham reintroduced his boar's head and shield at the start of 1985/86 season (albeit with different proportions – the different version of boar’s head was also used by Bradford Northern and Bradford Council at that time) and this was retained until the end of 1990/91. Apart from this relatively short period a bantam has been the main feature of City's crests for the best part of the last thirty years (ie since the end of 1981).
Notable is the fact that the bantam of the current City crest is much more ‘hen-like’ than all the previous versions of bantam designs that were most definitely cockrels. In fact the original bantam of 1909 (badge ref 0105) features a breed more recognisable as a fighting bird. Subsequent bantam designs (badge ref 0106, 0107 & 1101) were cockrels whereas the current 1991 bantam variant cannot be described as such and was likely a generic piece of clip art. It is ironic that having originally adopted a bantam as club mascot in 1909 on account of claret and amber plumage the club’s modern bantam character does not even feature those colours in its design!
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