Man O’War GFC organised a competition in the 3 local National Schools, Balrothery, Hedgestown and Milverton in April 1995. The competition asked the pupils to draw a suitable crest for the club. Each school was given a brief history of Man O’War area and the club. The children  were educated on how pirates lit beacons which guided ships onto the rocks at Barnageera. Part of the booty from one of the shipwrecks was a Turks Head which was brought to Man O’War and placed on top of a column outside the Man O’War Inn, where it remained until the 1950’s. (Historian and retired Librarian, Jim Walsh, has managed to retrieve the Turk’s Head from its owners and has it in safe keeping at present)

Club minutes for the Executive Committee meeting on 11th May 1995 considered the competition entries and recorded that “the standard of entry was very good”.

The winning entries were

– Balrothery : Karyn Shaw

– Hedgestown: Eoin Shortt;

– Milverton: Elaine Caffrey.

A recurring theme from the entries was a pirate ship. Deirdre Sheridan used the recurring theme of a pirate ship to draft a crest which was brought to O’Neills in September 1995 – the club had just won a set of 25 jerseys as ‘Team-of-the-Month’ in the Evening Herald. A Graphic Designer in O’Neills tidied up the draft on computer, added the banners above and below the shield and we then added the text in the banners – ‘Cumann Peile’ ‘1946’ (year of establishing the current club) and ‘Long Cogaidh’.

The first sighting of the new club crest was on the set of free jerseys in October 1995.