Roundup of the week, 11-3-19

Last time we had a roundup, we had a Northern Irish instance of an away team’s change kit forcing a home side to switch, and this wrap features a similar incident from the Republic.

Meetings of Bohemians (black/red stripes, black short and black socks) and Derry City (red/white stripes, black shorts, white socks) have been dealt with in different ways over the years.

In 2003, Bohs wore white shorts but arguably worsened what confusion existed, there have been quite a few games with both in home strips and, last year, the Dublin side used white shirts in the FAI Cup, which included a game against Derry.

The fact that Derry’s shirts last year and this have plain red backs helped differentiation in that regard and, one could argue that, given Bohs have black backs, there is no need for a change at the moment – or that a Derry shorts change would ease any concerns.

In 2018, Derry donned their green away shirts at Dalymount Park last year and that’s what they brought for last Friday’s meeting with Bohemians, albeit with the home black shorts (the miscoloured socks aren’t a mistake on our part, incidentally – Derry’s change shirts are what adidas call Collegiate Green with the socks Bold Green).

However, referee Tomás Connolly felt that, under the floodlights, the primarily black Bohs shirts could be confused with the dark green and so the home team wore their change shirts.

You might recall that Bohs’ original plan was to use an image of Bob Marley on their white alternative kit, but that idea had to be shelved and so a fist of solidarity was used instead.

On Saturday in the Premier League, Tottenham Hotspur wore bespoke change socks with their third kit at Southampton to avoid a clash with the home side’s black and red set, effectively swapping the dark grey with the light grey from the default set.

Again, as with the Bohemians-Derry example, both in home strips (or Spurs in white shorts, which they now only use in Europe) would probably have worked, given Southampton’s shirts have red backs.

Kit of the week though has to be that worn by Sampdoria at home to Atalanta in Serie A. Samp’s famous strip came about from the merging of Andrea Doria (blue and white halves) and Sampierdarenese (white with red and black horizontal bands) and, to mark the 120th anniversary of the latter’s foundation, the team wore a replica, albeit featuring their sponsor’s logo.

Of course, back when Sampierdarense existed, there were no such things as shirt numbers and it seems that they sought historical accuracy on that front too.