((KPride In The Jersey, the Gaelic games affiliate of this site, is in severe need of an overhaul.
Set up in 2010, it has made a big dent in charting the entire kit history of the counties involved in Gaelic football and hurling, but last year’s change to Adobe Illustrator graphics rather than MS Paint means that the graphics there are out of date.
There has been background work to update these, and to expedite the process I have decided to have a Twitter competition to determine the best set of kits across the 36 ‘counties’ (the 32 actual counties on the island of Ireland, expatriate sides London, Warwickshire and New York and Fingal, part of Dublin but competing in a lower tier in hurling).
Basically, it will involve showing the jerseys of two counties (first-choice, goalkeeper(s) and change, if applicable) and asking users to choose which they prefer in a poll. For example, these are the four which would feature for Cork – red primary shirt, white goalkeeper and alternative, blue goalkeeper alternative and hooped goalkeeper alternative:
Rather than using the GAA’s own inequitable provincial system, we have decided for a straight knockout open draw, with four preliminary round games followed by rounds of 32, 16, eight, four and two to arrive at a winner.
Following this morning’s draw for the preliminary round, independently adjudicated by the rasher sandwich we had yet to eat for breakfast, the first four ties are:
- Wicklow v Westmeath (update: Wicklow have advanced)
- Mayo v Kilkenny (Mayo won)
- Leitrim v Kerry (a win for Kerry)
- Waterford v Longford (victory for Waterford)
- Down v Warwickshire
These will go to poll on Twitter next week, with a recap of the results here before another open draw then for the first round proper.
