Get your mascot off the pitch

If you believe Premier League chairman Dave Richards last week on his (apparently off duty) rant in Qatar, football was invented in England. Working class backgrounds, factory workers and the such. He also claimed that the sport has been stolen from the Isles. The rights and wrong of his arguments are not a topic for this blog, but should he look closer to home?

We look at football these days and see the supposed "Americanisation" of the game. Music played after goals, cheerleaders and PA announcers who think they're celebrities all feature heavily on a Saturday afternoon, but what about those large creatures which float around the pitch, waving at children and generally being a menace? Not stewards or members of John Terry's family, but mascots.

We now see almost every sporting event as an excuse to create an alien or animal with which to bombard marketing campaigns, scare kids and to make a buck. The World Cup has seen some splendidly retro ones, my favourites being Pique (Mexico '86) and Ciao (Italia '90), no coincidence that they were the two first World Cups I remember as a child. The first World Cup mascot? World Cup Willie, 1966. English. The root of the problem, leading to the seediest, laziest stereotypical symbol of them all...

Juanito - missing a hammock and a cerveza

Juanito is almost a relic, the one time bedpan that looks like a work of art on the Antiques Roadshow. How can we make a game of men kicking each other seem friendly to children? Stick a sombrero on a cartoon Mexican (having recently watched the Uruguay v Brazil semi-final of that game, it was a brutal experience). But I'd rather have a boring Eton-attending caricature in a silly hat than the crazy offerings for this summer's Olympics...

Which brings me onto the main idea behind this blog. The mascots at league grounds. The sometimes smiley face with which to emblazon kid membership packs. The comic relief at half-time when the fixture list provides humorous match-ups (see the fight between Bristol City's Three Little Pigs when they met Wolfie of Wolverhampton below).

I'll huff, and I'll puff...

Of the more infamous variety, two names feature heavily. For more traditional reasons, the first is Cyril the Swan, of Swansea. Notorious amongst fans for being an obnoxious bird, he has caused mayhem for his antics. They include removing the head of Millwall's Zampa the Lion, and giving a quote to Dutch TV that he told Zampa "Don't fuck with the Swans". He received a £1,000 fine for that... He even featured in a wedding at the Vetch Field to Cybil the Swan, although rumours that they now run a hotel in Torquay are wide of the mark.

The other mascot of note is Gunnersaurus. The imaginatively named dinosaur representing Arsenal was fairly controversy free, until April 2011 before a match at the Emirates between his club and Liverpool, on a poignant afternoon remembering the Hillsborough tragedy.

A minute's silence was about to commence, and the two teams lined up on the centre circle, as is tradition. The crowd bowed their heads, the referee blew the whistle, and millions of television viewers got to see this...

Didn't even take his hat off

Needless to say he didn't vanish with his tail between his legs. He is still very much the face of the club's junior fans, whereas perhaps after that episode, extinction should be very much on the cards.