Fantasy Kit Friday – Ipswich Town and Norwich City 1989 swap

The guys at Top Corner Shirts have form when it comes to suggesting swaps for FKF, having requested a 1990s England and Scotland switch a few years ago.

This time, they’ve gone ever so slightly earlier, to 1989, when the East Anglian rivals Ipswich Town and Norwich City were entering into new kit deals.

After a decade or so with adidas, Ipswich were returning to Umbro while Norwich were breaking new ground with a partnership with Asics, who became the Canaries’ strip manufacturer and main sponsor. The brief from TCS was simple – how would things look if each club had done what the other did in real life?

The Norwich design – also used by Coventry City as a change strip – was of course a distinctive one, featuring a series of diagonal stripes from the right shoulder, a kind of ersatz forebear to the adidas Equipment look that would come in 1991.

Ipswch’s 1989 shirt would last for three seasons and on first glance it looks quite plain but there was a subtle pattern featuring gradients and a diamond-like pattern.

It would have been strange to keep Asics as the sponsors – though Bolton Wanderers did have Reebok across their chest while still wearing Matchwinner kit and St Mirren were sponsored by Fila while outfitted by Carbrini – and so we’ve pre-empted Celtic’s doubling up with Umbro by eight years.

We’ve just gone with the wordmark for the sponsor – while you could have had a large diamond with the maker’s mark on the sleeve, as Norwich did with Asics, the fact that the Coventry away also had it on the arm indicates that it was a design decision based on the stripes rather than being particular to Norwich’s sponsorship situation.

Feedback is always welcome, along with requests for new FKFs – comment below or tweet @museumofjerseys.