Great one-offs – Blackburn Rovers, 2000

• Thanks to Ian Herbert and Jim Hearson for assistance

The fact that we only became aware of this shirt until recently is perhaps indicative of how, in the days before social media, things outside of the Premier League didn’t receive as much exposure.

Blackburn Rovers finished fourth in the inaugural Football League of 1888-89, having already claimed three FA Cups with two more to come in 1890 and 1891 as well as 1928.

The club was 13 years old when organised league football began, coming into being on November 5, 1875.

For the centenary in 1975, special commemorative text was added to the Lancashire rose crest but by the time of the 125th anniversary, clubs were beginning to mark such events with special kits and that’s what Rovers did.

The strip they wore at home to Wolverhampton Wanderers on November 18 wasn’t a direct copy of any particular antecedent – white socks didn’t appear until 1959, for example – but the lighter blue harked back to the early days.

Kappa, who had become the club’s kit manufacturer the previous summer, had enough self-assurance to keep their markings off the exterior of the strip, as did sponsors Time Computers. That the players wore proper shirts, with buttoned cuffs, showed the care given to the production.

In the beginning, the blue half was on the right of the wearer’s body and this game was the first time for the club to wear such an arrangement since 1936. Rather than the squad numbers introduced by the Football League in 1999, Blackburn were given permission to play in 1-11 – technically, this was an anachronism as numbers didn’t become ubiquitous until 1939, but it was a welcome decision by them.

David Dunn, who scored the only goal from a penalty had 8 as his squad number that season while Craig Hignett wore 10 but they switched for the Wolves game. While Dunn would go on to wear 10 for Birmingham City after joining them from Blackburn, he switched to 8 for his final season at St Andrew’s and then wore 19 and 8 after rejoining Rovers.

That pair were not the only players with 1-11 squad numbers to wear
different digits against Wolves. Stig Inge Bjørnebye was usually
assigned number 5 – appropriate for a left-back in his native Norway – but he donned 3 while Craig Short wore 5 despite having 6 as his squad
number.

*

Lee Carsley, playing what proved to be his final game for the club, had 4
rather than his usual 23 – the only time in his career that he had a
1-11 squad number was when he wore 5 for his final club, Coventry City,
in 2010-11.

Blackburn’s 150th anniversary is just a year and a half away – might we see something similar from Rovers?