A FOOTBALL club is reverting back to the town’s traditional coat of arms on the club badge as momentum gathers over its planned return to St Helens.

St Helens Town AFC will feature the crest on its logo for the first time since moving away from their long-term home of Hoghton Road in 2000 to share Saints’ old Knowsley Road ground.

The new badge will feature the town’s traditional motto ‘Ex Terra Lucem’, which helped inspire London 2012 Opening Ceremony, scriptwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce, at the bottom.

St Helens Council granted permission for it to be used by Town. The move comes with the club looking towards making a possible return to the town in the next couple of years Ruskin Drive sports ground, which had planning permission approved in April for a major redevelopment.

The club, which plays in the North West Counties Premier Division, has been playing outside the borough since the closure of Knowsley Road in 2010. After an initial groundshare with Ashton Town they played last season at Ashton Athletic, finishing 17th in the league table. The club also has plans beyond next season to revert back to their traditional blue and white club colours.

“We’d been working towards hopefully coming back to St Helens with the Ruskin Drive development,” says club chairman John McKiernan.

“We’ve been outside of the borough for quite a while and there has been lots of thought about what plans we need to make and we felt that a greater association with the town itself was needed. There are still some issues over funding and things to be resolved but there certainly seems to be a lot of support for us to go back to playing in the town and the council have been very supportive. Everyone is pulling in the right direction and I am fairly confident that we will be there.”