Having amassed 98 points in winning the Football League Championship in 2002-03, Portsmouth were back in the top flight for the first time since 1987-88, which in turn was the only campaign since 1958-59 that they had been at such a high level.
At the time, the club produced their own kits under the Pompey Sport brand and, to celebrate reaching the Premiership, they came up with a strip which was reminiscent of the Nike offerings at the 2002 World Cup.
As with the 2002-03 kit, the away was in the same design, but the colour may have come as a surprise:
It was a strange state of affairs to have a second shirt which didn’t really solve many clashes caused by the home kit, but this was almost a literal ‘away kit’, intended to worn in as many games as possible on the road, even when there was no clash.
Exceptions were at rivals Southampton, Newcastle United and Fulham and Tottenham Hotspur, while the previous white away shirt was retained for games against other teams in royal blue (with the navy away socks worn at Chelsea).
Portsmouth brought out a new white change kit for 2005-06, with the navy kept as a third and it was worn with the white shorts and socks at Blackburn.
We’d be interested to hear readers’ thoughts on the Portsmouth situation from this season.
While other teams like Arsenal or Leeds had been wearing alternative kits against sides with whom their shirts didn’t clash since the 1970s, this practice emanated from the introduction of the shorts-clash rule and those clubs not wanting to wear alternative home shorts.
Portsmouth’s decision was certainly made from a marketing point of view, given that the shirt provided little differentiation from the first choice. Was it start of an epidemic from which there won’t be any return, or was it more acceptable than today’s needless use of change kits because the colours weren’t a million miles from the home strip?
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Real Betis must have set a record for this kind of thing this season. Their home, away and third kits are all mostly (differing shades of) green!
Just checked the kit choices of Pompey from that 04/05 season and gotta admit some of them were just ridiculous. The navy kit was worn against red, even against Palace navy was picked instead of white. But then, for no sensible reason the white kit was worn vs Norwich. Interestingly, at Villa Park the white kit was worn with royal blue change shorts instead of navy shorts from 03/05 kit. Makes me wonder why those shorts weren’t worn at Hawthorns, wouldn’t have been any sort of clash against navy and white stripes of Albion with royal-royal-red combo. Glad though against royal blue and white sides navy shorts were worn instead of royal blue ones. Would’ve been horrendous overall clash against Everton and Birmingham City had both teams worn royal blue and white. Think navy-navy-red mash up would’ve been better vs Blackburn instead of navy-white-white. Even though shorts would’ve clashed think that game would’ve been better to watch without Pompey having white on their kit due to that same overall clash reason like I mentioned before. At Stamford Bridge red home socks would’ve been better compared to navy ones to be worn with white shirts and shorts.
Overall don’t think Pompey having that navy kit for back-to-back seasons weren’t that bad as in both 03/04 and 04/05 it was teamed up with white shirt. Think the only problematic fixture was Blackburn away in 04/05. Normally against Rovers all navy would’ve been fine but in that season Blackburn wore blue shorts as first choice so there wasn’t an option which wouldn’t had clashed with B’burn home kit. And this not even the first example of a blue team having a blue change kit. Wigan had navy away in 2011/12 but like Pompey did 03/05 there was a white third kit in place so it that problematic, AFC Wimbledon had in 22/23 navy away and red third kit but there wasn’t a team in red and blue in League Two and don’t think they played against a red&blue team in any of the cup competetions either so highly doubt it caused any real issues in 22/23 season either.