Thursday, 18 March 2010

Football Mascots

A football mascot is a term for any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck to the football club.

The mascots usually take the form of a person, animal, or a costumed character, and appear at their teams matches and other related events. Since the mid-20th century, costumed characters have provided teams with an opportunity to choose a fantasy creature as their mascot. Costumed mascots are commonplace, and are regularly used as goodwill ambassadors in the community for their team.

Mascots get their names for many different reasons for example “Terry the Terrier” is due to Huddersfield Town having the nickname of “The Terriers” whereas Leeds United’s “Lucas the Kop Kat” is from when a rumour emerged that there had been spottings of a large cat in the carparks around Elland Road (granted the rumour was probably started by the clubs PR team) hence the cat design and Lucas as it's named after a Leeds United legend Lucas Radebe.

The Mascot Grand National is an annual race over hurdles between the mascots of various football and other sports teams. It is held at Huntingdon Racecourse in The Stukeleys near Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, England.

Public interest in the race began in 2000 when Harry the Hornet, the mascot of Watford F.C. won the second race. His co-mascot Harriet came second in 2001.

Since then it has expanded to include mascots from other sports and even non-sport mascots, the winners in 2005 and 2006 representing Kick 4 Life and The Sun newspaper respectively.


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