Competitive sports days, Happy in Luton and Billy the Badger | OneFootball

The Summer term is coming to an end, exam season is over, but there is now the annual Sports Day.

Yes, they still exist and no, everyone is not a winner with no losers.

Fully competitive in all aspects, at an Athletics stadium in South East London (some kids determined to win, have brought their running spikes) and to rev the competition up further we have the traditional House system. Red Blue Yellow houses etc.

Contrary to the myth perpetrated in the media, sports day is alive and kicking and the kids are just as competitive as we were back in the day, maybe more so.

I decide it is time to drum up the occasion with football style banners. This is the point where I must doff my cap to all those creative individuals who come up with the ideas for the banners. With a group of kids the same age as my lad we begin the process of creating mascots to go with the banners.

Red House is easy and the Dragon head and costume is designed and manufactured.

And on to Orange – Tiger etc.

To get inspiration, research is required, but this research got us looking at mascots of the Premier League teams as well as many others.

Our very own Monty the Magpie appears to be well established at St James’ Park and also incorporated into Wor Flags displays, taking centre stage in the Gallowgate End Tifo when we played PSG I believe.

There are lots of bland obvious and dull mascots like Arsenal’s Gunnersaurus, Man U’s red devil, the Liver bird, the Brighton Seagull, the Stamford Bridge Lion, ven Billy the Badger who we met at Fulham when we managed to wing it into hospitality a few years back.

But what drew my attention were the weird ones.

One of the weirdest was the Luton Mascot called “Happy Harry (see above at the top).” Really? Do you want your kids high fiving this stranger with a big ugly face wearing a hat. “Happy”, what’s he on? Harry makes Frank Sidebottom look normal. I saw Frank Sidebottom with Little Frank live at the Riverside many moons ago.

Which brings us to Man City. Their mascot is called Moonchester. They now have a reference to their unofficial anthem and some strangely styled K-Pop/Manga type character. Very strange.

And so finally a quick look at the Forest mascot. The folks of the East Midlands win this one easily. The Forest mascot is obviously Robin Hood, the most famous man to come out of Nottingham. A mascot who is actually the portrayal of an adult man wearing a Forest scarf and a green hat. As all the kids agreed, well weird.