- Thanks to two great Welsh kit aficionados, Jon Jones for the suggestion and Simon Shakeshaft for further information
Most of the examples in this series date from beyond the recent past – emergency kits were more of a feature back then, with every team now seemingly equipped with three strips each season, some – or many – of questionable utility.
Ever so often, though, we come across a modern instance of a one-and-down strip and one such occurrence came in September 2017, when Wales travelled to Chisinau to take on Moldova.
Obviously, the home country wear red so the visitors needed change and their second kit was a dark grey. Perhaps mindful of the Euro 2016 semi-final, when Wales were the away team but Portugal were also forced to change, the FAW suggested to Uefa that there might be the possibility of confusion.
Their proposed solution was that they might be allowed to wear a third kit, even though they hadn’t registered one at the outset of the campaign, and the governing body acquiesced, so Chris Coleman’s team took to the field in a yellow version of the adidas Squadra template.
What hadn’t been mentioned to Uefa was that Wales had played five games in the grey – including the defeats against England and Portugal at the Euros – and not won any of them, so a change away from that wasn’t exactly unwelcome.
The switch to yellow and black – the colours of the flag of St David – had the desired effect as they won 2-0, though unfortunately for them they would miss out on World Cup qualification.
I remember before the game that rumours were abound on social media that we were going to wear a one-off change kit instead of the grey abomination because of our very poor record whilst wearing the “cursed” strip. So when it was revealed that the old traditional yellow change colours were back I was well chuffed, and of course it brought us luck that night as we banished the ghosts of 1994 (where we lost 3-2 in Moldova) to win 2-0.
But sadly the Irish put paid to our hopes of qualification not long after and we reflected on what might have been (too many draws was the problem!)