The tardiness of today’s offering should hopefully be compensated by the fact that it’s a bumper edition.
It’s the melding of two independent requests – Paul Thomas asked for a 1976 Home Internationals mix-up and then David Morrissey sought something similar from 2000, so we decided to bridge the gap and do 1988 as well.
That meant that each country could have one kit from each of the others, and the easiest way to do that was to do two pairings per year. We wanted to avoid putting countries in kits by the same manufacturer as they had at the time, and though there are slight quibbles – like Wales ending up in Umbro in each each of the three years – we’re fairly happy with the outcome.
There has been a little bit of artistic licence taken with trim colours, but if you have a problem with that, then – like Lance Armstrong in his infamous podium speech – I feel sorry for you.
1976
1988
2000
God. Tthe similariry of that first Umbro England kit to my first actual Scotland strip – the away one of 1978 – is frightening.
Sorry about that – obviously, for 1976 I had to swap the two Admiral countries with the two who wore Umbro and I wanted 1988 to be the England/Northern Ireland swap so that I could do that adidas kit, so the options were limited.
I wonder should the Wales 1976 kit have a basic all-white dragon rather than the copy of the actual badge. NI wore the full colour version of their crest before and after their version of the kit.