Season’s Meetings – Fulham and Newcastle United, 2002-03

Newcastle United welcome Fulham to St James’ Park today in the Premier League.

In terms of visibility, it should be okay – we would expect Fulham to wear their green away shirts with alternative shorts and socks to the default navy sets.

That provides clear definition, which is what you’d expect when a black-and-white-striped team takes on a side that normally wears white shirts and black shorts (albeit all-white this season in Fulham’s case). It hasn’t always been the case, though.

A while back, we looked at the travails that Newcastle had with Tottenham Hotspur at the turn of the millennium, something which was exacerbated by the fact that they were the only two adidas teams in the Premiership at the time. It was a similar scenario for the Magpies and the Cottagers a few years later.

Fulham had been promoted in 2001-02, but while their striped kit had not been considered suitable at St James’ Park, Newcastle were at least able to wear blue in West London. With Tottenham switching to Kappa in the summer of 2002, adidas’s representation was down to two again and the games were black-and-white affairs.

In December, the sides met on Tyneside. Fulham’s away kit for 2002-03 was in the reverse colours to the home strip, which was fine against the likes of Bolton Wanderers (theoretically, anyway), Leeds United and Tottenham, it wasn’t suitable against Newcastle.

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Still, the shorts from the change kit made for an all-white look that was passable against the black-heavy Newcastle outfit. The home side won 2-0.

However, while a shorts-change was a big help for that match, it did not provide the same panacea at Loftus Road in April (Craven Cottage was being redeveloped, hence the ground-share with QPR).

For reasons unknown, Newcastle had been provided with a cream and navy Ajax-style away kit – it was only worn twice and neither in ideal circumstances.

The back was solid cream and so it couldn’t work against a team in white. Newcastle wore their change shorts but it could be argued that that only worsened the overall clash.

A 2-1 loss was their third straight defeat but they finished the season with four unbeaten games to finish in third and qualify for the Champions League again.

The following season, Fulham switched to Puma and Newcastle brought an alternative strip to Craven Cottage when the sides met there in October. It wasn’t the end of the problems, though.