Oh, the design would always be owned by the club, any designers' work is owned by the person/company who commissions it, they have copyright for 10 years whether they get it copyrighted or not. I mean more towards someone 'stealing' work, would be easy for someone to do and the club not actually know, until they have a court case about it.
Unfortunately, in house Design teams aren't usually the best crop of current designers, mainly because they're working with the same things, for the same audience, so the badge is not terrible. It's reasonable. It was never going to be the greatest logo ever created, or even up there with the best.