The Changing face of – Football Mascots
Mascots at football matches are seen by many as a recent
innovation and the notion of a man in a giant cat, dog or swan costume
certainly is a relatively new creation. There was a time however when all you
needed to become a mascot for your favourite team was an umbrella, a rattle and
a balloon!
In a copy of football league review from 1965, we stumbled
across this photo of Norwich City’s Peter Judds – here he is…
Appearing in the talking point of the week, Peter said that
he went around with his umbrella and rattle to get the crowds in a ‘good humour’.
He would also place a Norwich balloon in the centre circle for young fans to
run on to the field and burst and by the mid 1960’s, he’d been doing this for
fifteen years.
By the 1970’s, people such as Peter had disappeared: We did
have Ken Baily – Mr England who could be seen at Wembley as well as places such
as Twickenham where one of the perks of his job was to get a close up view of streaker
Erika Roe’s ample ‘form’.
Around the domestic grounds however, nobody can recall
anything of the kind from 1970 onwards – sadly, the likely reality was that they
were an easy target for verbal abuse and toilet rolls.
Fast forward to 2012 and it’s been a little difficult to
track down definitive information on Norwich City’s current mascots and this
photo* from 2010 shows three of them!
Research into the names wasn’t easy either but I believe the
trio in question are Splat the Cat, the Aviva Lemur and Captain Canary. At one
stage, there was another mascot known as dumpling!
In addition, Wikipedia claims that the correct name for the
Mascot on the far right is Camilla Canary but then again, this was a website
that once credited Liverpool striker Luis Suarez with a world record for eating
human ears…
So what’s best – people in giant animal costumes or a bloke
with an umbrella? It could transform the Mascot Grand National at the very
least.
*Thanks to Ian – Jelltex – for much needed information and
for kindly letting me use the image from 2010 – here’s his Flickr link - http://www.flickr.com/photos/jelltecks/4848826950/
The canary in the picture is Captain Canary, Camilla is a female canary who used to be his "companion". She has not been around as much recently and local folklore suggests she may just stay at home nowadays and watch the kids.
ReplyDeleteYou are right in regards to Splat the Cat and the Aviva Lemur, however this year we also have a dinosaur named Sport-o-saurus, and in previous years we have also had such characters as a giant green and yellow mobile phone, and Lotus/Proton cars.
As far as I'm aware Peter Judds still wanders the pitch at Carrow Road before games blowing bubbles whilst carrying his famous green and yellow umbrella. He must be at least 80 now although in Norfolk terms this is still quite young.
Hope this helps!!