By its nature, this series – see here for other articles – is more likely to include change kits, but there are instances of teams playing games in home-coloured unique kits.
In the past, cup finals were often a source of such outfits, and today’s entry is one of those examples. Next Saturday will mark the 34th anniversary of Norwich City winning the Football League Cup, known as the Milk Cup back then, as they beat Sunderland 1-0 (incidenally, both clubs would be relegated at the end of that season).
At the time, Norwich wore Hummel kits and in 1984-85 they had a fairly simple design, featuring the company’s chevrons down the arms. Hummel also liked to use their identifying marks down the sides of the body – as with Denmark’s Euro 84 kits – and these were the big additions for Norwich’s trip to Wembley.
As well as the commemorative text above the club crest, Norwich also had the logo of their sponsors, Poll Withey, changed from red to black for the occasion.
Sunday sees Norwich City take on Ipswich Town in the East Anglia Derby.
The sides are currently level on points in 12th and 13th places in the Championship and whichever side loses will surely give up any hope of making the play-offs.
Ipswich fans will hoping for a repeat of the ‘Destruction Derby’ of just under 20 years ago – February 21, 1998 – when they recorded a 5-0 win. Swapping the kits from this game was Kevin Smith’s suggestion for today.
Norwich had quite a nice Pony kit at the time, designed by Bruce Oldfield, sponsored by Colman’s and notable for the yellow shorts. The change strip was a pleasing green reversal. Such a style is easily transferable and doesn’t lose anything in its Ipswich-ising.
Doing a reversal of the Ipswich kit was perhaps a bit harder and represents the first use of a fantasy maker in Fantasy Kit Friday.
At the time, Ipswich produced their own kits under the Punch brand (the horse on their crest is a Suffolk Punch), and obviously that couldn’t be used on a Norwich kit, so we opted to create a new maker in Citizen, drawing upon Norwich’s old nickname.
As you can see, that was more than two months ago. Ostensibly, the reason for the wait was because the pattern took so long to draw, but really it took that long to find a bottle of whiskey strong enough to help forget the trauma of doing it.
…and then on Sunday, in Gaelic football’s McGrath Cup, the first half between Limerick and Kerry caused such confusion that Kerry changed at half-time.
Spot the difference between the first and second half at the Kerry v Limerick McGrath Cup Final this afternoon! 📸: @Diarmuid_Gpic.twitter.com/tCv5U2fuwo
It got us in mind of some of the worst clashes* we have seen, across various sports. One would think in the modern era, with nearly every top football club having three kits, that clashes would be a thing of the past, but you’d be wrong.
Spurs haven’t been blameless when the away team, either – in 2012-13, their home was all-white and away all-navy, with a silver and black halved third outfit a questionable choice. Their trip to face West Bromwich Albion could certainly have been better dealt with, though there have been worse clashes.
West Brom also proved troublesome for Newcastle United on the final day of 2002-03, though of course the blame lies with the Toon for having a cream and navy away when their home is black and white stripes.
Three years previously, Newcastle had a white away, which obviously couldn’t be worn away to Tranmere in the FA Cup. Switching to white shorts to avoid a shorts clash arguably made the overall look even worse, however.
While Arsenal generally change when away to teams with white shirts, there are times when teams visiting them will have white. Why Charlton Athletic were allowed to have white jerseys and red shorts at Highbury in 2000 is anybody’s guess.
Later that same season, Arsenal wore a new navy third shirt at home to Sparta Prague in the Champions League. While the Czech side’s shirt is dark red and a very different colour to the navy up close, from a distance there was what we might term a ‘shade clash’, so much so that Arsenal switched to their yellow away shirts for the second half.
At international level, last spring saw Belgium and Portugal both change for a friendly, with poor results.
Going further back, at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, Czechoslovakia opted for white as their first-choice colours, so England had to change when meeting them. Their sky-blue alternative kit was troublesome for viewers on black-and-white televisions though, and so for the game against Germany in the knockout stages, England reverted to red.
Strictly speaking, the meeting of Scotland and New Zealand in the 2007 Rugby World Cup dealt with a clash as the All Blacks changed to grey jerseys, still with considerable black panelling. Combined with Scotland’s shirt in the newest Canterbury template, featuring a lot of lighter embellishments, it was far from ideal.
This was the 2011 Australian Rules Football grand final, between Collingwood (black and white stripes) and Geelong (navy and white hoops). In the AFL, the home team wears dark shorts and the away team white shorts and that helped here, as did Collingwood having black backs and Geelong white backs. In a fast-moving game, however, confusion was a strong possibility.
