Darlington F.C. - Colours and Badge

Colours and Badge

In 1888, Darlington's kit consisted of a shirt with black and white vertical stripes, black shorts and black socks. Apart from a period between the 1910s and 1936, when blue shorts were worn, the basic colours of the home kit have remained black and white. The shirt design has varied, from the 1888 vertical stripes, through hoops, plain white, and back to hoops again in the 1990s. Sponsors' names have appeared on Darlington's shirts since the 1980s. A table of kit manufacturers (since the 1970s) and shirt sponsors appears on the right.

Supporters were invited to vote for the design of the 2010–11 kit, to be manufactured by Erreà; options for the home shirt each had black-and-white hoops, while the proposed away colours were either the traditional red or sky-blue and white. The front of the home shirt has black-and-white hoops with a curved white panel, the back is largely white, and it has black sleeves with white trim and a black collar; shorts are white and socks have black-and-white hoops. The design originally chosen had to be changed to comply with Conference rules prohibiting predominantly black kit (to avoid a clash with match officials' colours). The away kit is all red with black trim on the shirt. The shirts bear the name of hotel The Morritt, winners of the right to sponsor the shirt in a draw from among seven local businesses, each of which had purchased a hospitality package.

The club badge is in the form of a shield, divided diagonally into two parts; the smaller section, to the upper right, is in the club's home colour of white, the larger is red, their traditional away colour. In the white section is a stylised Quaker hat, emblematic of the major role played by the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in the history of the town. The larger section depicts George Stephenson's Locomotion No 1, the steam locomotive that hauled the first train on the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825, representing the importance of the railway industry to the area. Across the bottom of the shield is a ribbon bearing the club's nickname, The Quakers, and the whole rests on a bed of oak leaves, symbolic of strength and endurance.