With our Champion Cherries about to go global, All Departments will be highlighting a smattering of curios from Bournemouth’s largely modest history over the close season.
In 1936 Bournemouth and Boscombe Athletic sported a club badge for the first time. An adapted version of the town’s crest, it was in use for the next 30 years, all of which were spent in the third tier of the Football League. The motto ‘Pulchritudo et Salubritas’ written on the scroll beneath the shield meant ‘Beautiful and Healthy’, a phrase which occasionally summed up the events the Dean Court faithful were witnessing on the field of play.
The original badge was replaced by the lettering ‘BFC’ in 1966, an unusual and erroneous choice, as the Cherries have never been known as Bournemouth Football Club at any time in our history. This mistake was eventually spotted, and the town crest badge briefly reinstated for the the 1970-71 season. The following year saw the first incarnation of the iconic Dickie Dowsett header image, which has remained the club crest in various guises ever since, aside from a two season hiatus between 1981 and 1983 when ‘The Cherries’ badge adorned the players shirts.
The Dowsett badge has drawn a mixed response from Bournemouth fans over the years, although the reaction to the ‘evolved crest’ introduced in the summer of 2012 was mainly positive. Despite this, as the image on the bottom right of the above collage shows, some fans have continued to make their own amendments.
Striker Dowsett played for the Cherries between 1957 and 1962, scoring 84 goals in 184 games. He is pictured below scoring in Bournemouth’s 2-0 victory at Millwall on 5th April 1958.
In this podcast interview from September 2014, Dickie explains how his likeness became the most familiar image in Cherries’ history:
http://alldepartments.podbean.com/mf/web/pfmsdu/DickieDowsett.mp3%20
You can read a detailed description of the Cherries’ original town crest badge here.
AFC Bournemouth Podcast 