this may or may not be of interest to some people. a friend of mine claims to have been present at the supporters club meeting that decided that the clubs nickname would be the 'the wings'. seems that there were two choices - the wings and the wellies. my friend favoured the wellies but was outvoted.
Mark you may well be right, I found a image of a programme called Winger for the 1983 season online clearly no badge and the wings nickname on it. and I somehow recall there was a competition to find a nickname in the early 80's as I recall trying to link the cannon, so it may have originated from there, in which case henigist friend could be right.
My theory is
Their was some form of competition held by the then supporters club with hengist friend on the judging panel, a nickname was agreed and somehow the pegasus was added or replaced the invita horse at a later date to represent "the Wings"
The Winger programme was for the 1983/4 season so taking into account that season run from September, the meeting/competition would have been set in either the 1981/2 season, or 1982/83 season.
it is posible that the competition was held in 1982 of the 82/3 season and followed up by the winger programme in Sept 83.
we would need to look at a copy of the programmes on those season to see if the words the wings appeared on the programme to narrow the timeline to the correct season.