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# Latics diary: badge fiasco is a misunderstanding about ownership
- URL: https://www.oldham-owl.co.uk/latics-diary-badge-fiasco-is-a-misunderstanding-about-ownership/
- Published: 2026-10-05T08:06:28.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-11T07:06:37.000Z
- Description: The Rothwells and the club suits need to learn what bits of Oldham Athletic they own and what bits they don't
- Author: Will Holdaway
- Tags: Sport

A quiet week at Boundary Park. Nothing to see here. No game last Saturday, no game till next Saturday. The transfer window is shut. The management and players have a certain amount of work to do after four straight defeats, which would be an outlier run of results had it not occurred just four months ago. The time before that when Latics suffered four straight defeats, they were relegated from League Two and the club nearly went under after years of incompetent stewardship from people who did not know what they were doing.

### Who owns what in a football club?

The people and entities who make up a football club are the owners of the corporate set-up, who come and go; the staff of the club, including its media operatives, who come and go; and the management and the players, who come and go. Sponsors and box wallahs come and go, but are more likely to be fans, so will probably go from being emotionally entangled with the club to being commercially *and* emotionally entangled.

The fans of the club, whose comings and goings are measured not in years like on a CV or in company accounts, but in lifetimes, like on headstones, are the rightful authors and custodians of the story of the club. They are also the curators of its identity.

### Bunkabin blues

Let’s take a couple of recent examples of when the club’s corporate hierarchy have failed to recognise the limitations of their ownership. In early May 2025, the club unveiled a new shirt to much acclaim from the assembled guests at their annual awards night. It was sold as a throwback to earlier years when the shirt looked more rugby-like, with a large blue vertical band in the centre and a badge the size of a pub darts contest winner's shield.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6d/6a/6d6a162d-10f3-4a84-b962-39d5e3f56145/content/images/2026/10/two-shirts.jpg)

If you poke your own eyes out, you can just about see the similarity between the shirt on the left and the shirt on the right

Luke Rothwell, co-owner of the club with his sister Su Schofield, was especially proud of the new shirt because Bunkabin, another Rothwell family concern, was unveiled as the new shirt sponsor. There were applause in the room – a standing ovation from the lords and ladies in their monkey suits and best frocks. A great time was had by all.

Outside the room, on Twitter and in real life among the fanbase, the verdict was different. The shirt was a dud *because* of the Bunkabin logo, which looks like it was designed by a company that doesn’t depend on branding for even one English pound of its income. It had to go.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6d/6a/6d6a162d-10f3-4a84-b962-39d5e3f56145/content/images/2026/10/bunkabin-logo.png)

Bunkabin: NFsG about branding since 1979

And go it did – or the worst half of it anyway. The Bunkabin learning-to-read typeface remained, but the Bunkabin Man crayon drawing of a sleeping builder was erased. No one knows the location of the one and only Oldham Athletic shirt with the Bunkabin Man on it, but it ought to be on the boardroom wall as a reminder to all within that they are of the same mind as the fans only when the fans say so.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6d/6a/6d6a162d-10f3-4a84-b962-39d5e3f56145/content/images/2026/10/evnutal-shirt.jpg)

The compromise shirt: the red A in Bunkabin is gone, as is Bunkabin Man

This was no doubt a chastening experience for Luke, Su and the other board members and executives. Bunkabin and other Rothwell family concerns keep the lights on at Boundary Park. They’ve been extremely generous to Oldham Athletic and continue to be so. At the last count, the club had racked up operating losses of somewhere in the region of £10 million in three years. That hole has been plugged by loans from the Rothwells. It would be totally fair if they resented the negative reaction to them putting their company name on the club shirt.

If the Rothwells wanted any further definition of what is and is not their lane, it came *after* Bunkabin Man’s removal from the shirt. The fans turned again and now Bunkabin Man is a cult figure. For the last away game of the following season, the Booze Bus regulars and many others wore Bunkabin Man garb for their fancy dress. 

The club may have misread the adoption of Bunkabin Man as an admission on the part of supporters that they had been hasty in their condemnation. It wasn’t an admission of anything. It was a show of power: the supporters of the club own the story and the identity. The suits are listed as owners at Companies House and are responsible for the accounts.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6d/6a/6d6a162d-10f3-4a84-b962-39d5e3f56145/content/images/2026/10/boozebusbunkabin.jpg)

Josh Stones joins the Booze Bus lads ahead of Newport away last season

### Bunkabin Man redux

We have to assume that the one-of-a-kind Bunkabin Man shirt is not on the boardroom wall by way of a cautionary tale, because last week the club committed a very similar public relations error by unveiling a choice of two equally unsatisfactory designs for the new club crest. The overwhelming majority of fans want the one from the 1980s and 1990s, and that’s that.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6d/6a/6d6a162d-10f3-4a84-b962-39d5e3f56145/content/images/2026/10/two-badges.jpg)

Pick one

The Rothwells are clearly not mad into design and branding. The Bunkabin marque tells us in no uncertain terms that no one involved in the Bunkabin business – buyers or sellers – has cared about the logo…since 1979\. The Rothwells care about, and are very good at, supplying things that work to people who need them and can pay for them, which is absolutely as it should be. Function trumps form all day every day when it comes to portacabins and many other businesses…but not football.

If the public relations people came out and said something like: “You can’t have the badge you want because the club don’t own it,” a good number of the objectors might fall away. (Most of them will say: “Find out who owns the bloody thing and get it back by fair means or foul. If you're not cheating, you're not trying.”) But the PR people have not said that, preferring instead to treat fans as if they are the lowest functionaries in the decision-making process of the business. 

Hereth begins another lesson: consultation does not mean what the Independent Football Regulator thinks it means. It means what fans of the club think it means.

Watch this space for the outcome of this little tête-à-tête.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6d/6a/6d6a162d-10f3-4a84-b962-39d5e3f56145/content/images/2026/10/actual-badge-everyone.jpg)

The badge everyone wants...but the club won't say why they can't have it