boleynbadges

Welcome to my website, here I would like to show you football badges from around the world that have a pair of crossed hammers on there crest like my club West Ham United. I hope you find this a interesting site, I am always looking for new badges of clubs with crossed hammers if you can help me with any please get in touch. please click on each individual badge for information about that badge.. please keep coming back as there are many more badges etc to come...

most of the crossed hammers  all stem from indutsries of coal mining, copper mining, salt mining, ship bulding from poland,the czech repulic,  slovakia,  and from germany after the second world war when germany was divided in to east and west,all existing football clubs were disbanded, and then had to reform under different names. a new social system, a new culture and new clubs!! as east germany was to be a socialist worker's republic, the clubstook there names from local firms, businesses and industrial companies. and were intended to be representative of their working class roots. since professionalism was froned upon behind the iron curtain, many players remained on the works payrolls but were given menial non-taxing jobs that allowed them the time to train.

all the way up untill the fall of the berlin wall, football there was governed by a central body, known as the dfv, who also decided which players would play for which teams and inevitably it led to them becoming a corrupt regime. and all of the country's top players ended up at a very select handful of clubs. with the lack of a transfer system, players more or less had to do as they were told. or they simply did not play.

as i said, most club names indicate which industry or business they aer linked to,and most of the ones coming under the same name were also linked by their own central governing body. just so you know here are a few of the clues. aktivist = from the mining and coal industries. = wismut = mainly uranium mining.on behalf of the soviet union. stahl = steel. tractor = argicultural. dynamo = police and secret service aufbau = construction and bulding. vorwarts = army. motor = engineering gluckauf = mining. lok railway.

some times the club had the name of a smaller individual firm of factory who supported them, and there was a law which meant that every firm had to sponsor their own sport's club. one of the oddest names i have come acrosswas from the region of chemnitz whose team is now called karl marx stadt, but back in the day they was called betreibssportgemein motor fritz heckertkarl marx stadt!!! you can bet it was fun on the terraces when some wag shouted out give us a b!!!!!

so now when ever you see a badge with tracktor on it you know it's linked to the farming and agricultural industryand when you see a game between stahl and dynamo it's the steel workers vs the old bill!!! another thing you see on many badges is the word gluck which is german for the word luck and much used by the mining teams whose workers spent long hours under the ground and said whenever they were on their way down into there subterranean hell-hols

 i now have crossed hammers football club badges from 22 countrys from around the world 

 

"About 15 years ago I started collecting football badges from around the world. One day a good friend of mine from Poland sent me the club badge for a Polish team called Gornik Zabrze. I could not believe my eyes - like our club, West Ham United, it had a pair of crossed hammers on it!

"At first I was surprised that we were not alone in having a pair of crossed hammers on our crest. But after a little research I soon became hooked, and decided to find out more about this club from Poland - and subsequently, many more. i just can not believe  what a can of worms i have opened!!

"I was amazed by how many clubs and countries from around the world have the crossed hammers as part of their crests.

get in touch!   stevewhu@boleynground.wanadoo.co.uk