In June 2009, Cardiff City completed a state-of-the-art 26,828 seater stadium on the site of the now-demolished old Cardiff Athletics Stadium. The project required the rebuilding of the athletics stadium, to be known as Cardiff International Sports Stadium, on the opposite side of Leckwith Road in Cardiff. This ground was deliberately built to house both Cardiff City FC & Cardiff Blues RFC.

The plan required the demolition of the Cardiff Athletics Stadium, and the council initially insisted that its replacement be built before the start of construction of the Cardiff City Stadium, which would allow the city to have a major athletics facility for the 11 months between the demolition of the old stadium and the building of a new athletics facility nearby. But developers said that the main infrastructure work including highway improvements, drainage, gas supply and electricity cables could be carried out in a way that would allow Leckwith to remain open until July 2007. On 20 September 2007 it was announced that the Cardiff Blues rugby union club would leave their Cardiff Arms Park home to become tenants of Cardiff City at the new Leckwith stadium.

Construction began on the new Cardiff International Sports Stadium in January 2007, and that venue was opened in January 2009. The new football ground, officially named Cardiff City Stadium, opened in July 2009. On 8 May 2012, Cardiff Blues confirmed they would leave the Stadium to return to Cardiff Arms Park for the 2012–13 season and onwards.

Cardiff City football club Cardiff City Football Club is a professional football club based in Cardiff, Wales (Welsh: Clwb Pêl-droed Dinas Caerdydd) that competes in the English football league system. The club played in the Premier League for the first time in the 2013–14 season, at the end of which they were relegated. They play their home games at the Cardiff City Stadium, after moving from Ninian Park in 2009.

The club was founded as Riverside A.F.C. in 1899 and is the only club from outside England to have won the FA Cup, which they won in 1927. The club won the Football League Championship title in the 2012–13 season and were promoted to the top flight for the first time in 51 years. This followed two lost national cup finals, the 2008 FA Cup Final against Portsmouth and the 2012 Football League Cup Final against Liverpool, the latter being settled by a penalty shootout.

Since 1908 the club's home colours have been blue and white, leading to a nickname of The Bluebirds, with the exception of a period between 2012 and 2015 when the club's owner, Vincent Tan, re-branded the club and changed the home colours to red. The change was reversed back to blue in January 2015.

BLUEBIRDS' HERALDRY

COLOURS & CREST

When Riverside A.F.C. was formed in 1899, the club used a chocolate-brown and gold checkered shirt. Since the club became known as Cardiff City F.C. in 1908, their home colours have consisted of a blue shirt and white or blue shorts and socks. However for the first nine years black socks were used. In 1919 Cardiff reverted to blue socks with a white hoop. From 1926 Cardiff used a turquoise blue with a white collar, until 1930 when the darker blue was re-introduced. In 1936 the club adopted white sleeves. For the next 20 years the club rarely changed their kit, just swapping between white and blue sleeves.

In 1959, Cardiff used white socks for the first time. In the 1965–66 season they used an all-blue strip for the first time, the following season they swapped back to white shorts and socks but keeping the same shade of blue. From 1975 they played in an all-blue strip with yellow and white vertical stripes. In 1983 Cardiff turned back to a blue shirt, white shorts and blue socks using this until 1992 before going all-blue again up until 1996.

In 2012, Cardiff changed their home kit colours from the traditional blue, white and yellow to red and black. The crest was also changed to one in which the Welsh dragon was more prominent than the traditional bluebird. The crest was changed to "appeal in 'international markets'" The change angered fans, who expressed their opposition in news and social media as well as directly to management. Cardiff rugby player Jamie Roberts criticised the change. However, on 9 January 2015, it was announced that Cardiff City were changing their home kit back to blue with a red away kit, effective immediately.


CREST HISTORY

From 1908 Cardiff played in unadorned shirts. This changed in 1959, when they played in shirts with a simple crest featuring an image of a bluebird. The following season their shirts were featureless, and remained so until 1965, when they played in shirts with the word "Bluebirds" embroidered. A new crest, similar to the one previously used and again featuring a bluebird, was introduced in 1969. Variations on this crest remained until the 1980s, when extra features including words and additional motifs were added. A major change was made in 2012, when owner Vincent Tan attempted to rebrand the club in order to expand the club's appeal outside of Wales. This change gave large prominence to the Welsh Dragon, reducing the bluebird to a minor feature. In March 2015, Cardiff announced a new crest which would predominantly feature the Bluebird once again with an oriental dragon replacing the standard Welsh dragon.

WALES ONLINE - The Bluebird's managed a fifth win out of the final seven games on the road with first-half goals from Joe Ralls and Eoin Doyle. The history books will read that the Bluebirds of 2014/2015 finished in 11th, but the context reveals that some of the football played, some of the signings made, some of the standards and the supporters switching off made even this difficult to achieve. Their manager Russell Slade believed it could have been worse.

BBC NEWS MARCH 2015

Cardiff City have unveiled a new badge that will be worn on their kits from the 2015-16 season. Owner Vincent Tan gave the go-ahead for the Championship club's home shirts to change back from red to blue and to make the Bluebird more prominent on the badge after consulting supporters.

Sian Branson, founder of the Bluebirds Unite group, which campaigned for the colour change, welcomed the move. She is quoted as saying: "At least I know I'm supporting CCFC when I look at this badge," "The future's blue and we don't have to feel as detached from our club any more."

Branson added that there was: "still plenty that needs to be done" and hoped the fans and club could continue to work together. The club's new crest features an oriental dragon based on the one featured at Cardiff City Hall. Cardiff City said the design of the dragon is the result of "three distinct influences".

The revised club logo from 2015 for the 2016 season

A club statement said: "Projecting our Welsh heritage, the stance was taken from the national flag, as has been seen on our crest or shirt for a number of years. "Celebrating Asian-linked culture, design and tradition influences, we also looked to create a dragon that could be primarily owned and appreciated locally. "To achieve this the main influence was drawn from the dragon placed on top of Cardiff City Hall, as has been the case since 1904."

Tan's controversial rebrand to red was introduced in June 2012 after he bought the club, to generate "appeal in international markets". The club gained promotion to the Premier League in April 2013, but were relegated back to the Championship after one season. They are 15th in the table.

The blue-to-red rebrand led to infighting among Bluebirds supporters. Fans campaigning for a return to blue would chant "we'll always be blue" after 19 minutes and 27 seconds of home games, the time chosen marking Cardiff's FA Cup success in 1927.

Cardiff City Supporters' Club spokesman Vince Alm is quoted as saying that the new badge will not please all fans, but is "a step in the right direction". "The new badge looks like a Cardiff City badge, the Bluebird is more prominent and it embraces a lot of our heritage with the 1927 shield." "I just hope the fans embrace it now." 

CARDIFF CITY FC CONTACTS

CARDIFF CITY FOOTBALL CLUB
Cardiff City Stadium

Leckwith Road

Cardiff, CF11 8AZ

Main Office: 0845 365 1115
Fax: 0845 365 1116
Email: club@cardiffcityfc.co.uk

Website: www.cardiffcityfc.co.uk
Twitter: www.twitter.com/CardiffCityFC
Facebook: www.facebook.com/CardiffCityFC
Google+

FINANCES - The entity participating in the Premier League is "Cardiff City FC Limited", which is a member of the Football Association of Wales. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of "Cardiff City Football Club (Holdings) Limited", which is the ultimate parent company of the group. There is one shareholder owning 10% or more of the issued-share capital in the ultimate parent company, Vincent Tan, who holds 51%.

Principal shareholder Tan from Malaysia is founder, major shareholder and, until 2013, chairman of the Berjaya group of companies.

In January 2014, the club's financial records for the fiscal period up to May 2013 were revealed. According to the released figures, Cardiff City have recorded a £30 million loss, taking their overall level of debt to £118 million, of which £66 million is owed to owner Vincent Tan from loans to the club, even after the Malaysian businessman converted £2.5 million into shares and wrote off £5 million in interest owed.

Tan Dato' Seri Vincent Tan Chee Yioun (born 1952); (Chinese: 陳志遠; pinyin: Chén Zhìyuǎn; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Tân Chì-uán), known simply as Vincent Tan, is a Malaysian businessman and investor. He is the chairman and chief executive of Berjaya Corporation Berhad, which is in a wide array of businesses which includes golfing, property, resorts, and gambling in a group known as the Berjaya Group.

In 2010, he entered the Forbes billionaire list with an estimated worth of US$1.3 billion (RM4.2 billion). Tan's success in the Malaysian business sector has been attributed in part to his close association with prominent Malay political figures.

BLUEBIRD TRADEMARK HISTORY

COMPANY - CARDIFF CITY FOOTBALL CLUB LIMITED

FOOTBALL LINKS & REFERENCE

Cardiff City FC

BBC news sport football Cardiff city

Wikipedia Vincent_Tan

Wikipedia Cardiff_City_F.C.

Wales Online sport football news Nottingham forest 1-2 Cardiff city

http://www.thefa.com/thefacup

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/nottingham-forest-1-2-cardiff-city-9173128

http://www.cardiffcityfc.co.uk/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/31795873

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Tan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff_City_F.C.

This website is Copyright © 2015 Bluebird Marine Systems Limited.  The names Bluebird™, Bluefish™, Blueplanet BE3™ and Ecostar DC50™ are trademarks especially concerning battery exchange for electric road and racing vehicles, service stations, electric motors, transmissions, solar panels, vehicle body panels and parts. All other trademarks are hereby acknowledged.

   The color blue is a protected feature of the marks.