We’ve been quite vociferous in our contempt for the sponsorship deal and the deleterious impact a chogging great patch has on the aesthetic value of an otherwise decent looking kit set, so we applaud this move even if we still don’t like the negative connotations that go with advertising a hock shop, global in reach or not. It had been noted that even though Motherwell have the same sub-prime sponsor, their kits hadn’t been visually sullied by use of a patch, which in the case of our away shirt was so vast, so high up the chest that it dominated and spoiled a good looking away shirt. Thanks for listening Hull City*.

Sadly, the decision to change came too late for the home shirt, which is already on sale from Tiger Leisure, but you can always try boil-washing it off**.

* Can we use the amber socks worn against Bradford, and part of the original adidas design, for every home game too please? Mwah.

**Amber Nectar is not responsible for the results if you actually try this

The ethics of having Cash Converters as a sponsor has been debated to death, so we won’t retread old ground here, instead let’s focusing on the aesthetic impact of their logo on the new away shirt.

Having Cash Converters’ logo in a black patch wasn’t strictly necessary on the home shirt, white text against black and amber stripes is easily readable, it was distinctive enough when Karoo’s wordmark was on the 2008/2009 shirt, ditto Totesport’s URL last season. Having the same patch on the away shirt is just wanton ruination of a lovely shirt, it completely dominates* all other detail on such a subtle coloured garment. The text alone in black would have looked infinitely better, the only reason you’d use the black patch is to save money by using the same ones as used on the home shirt.

Compare the sponsor on our away shirt to that on West Brom’s, which uses the same adidas template. Even with superfluous Chinese characters their sponsor’s logo looks better for not using a patch. The shirt itself is lovely, a simple affair with alternating matte/shiny hoops, and light blue has some historical connection to Hull City as we wore it immediately post WW2 when the Board of Trade deemed amber (or orange as Harold Needler wanted) dye too expensive as the country adapted to peacetime.

Perhaps the only benefit of the patch is it allows the sponsor to be blacked out with gaffer tape better should you wish to show you’re a Cash Converters concientious objector, or maybe it’ll peel off after a few washes. White shorts and light blue socks complete the kit, which could have been an absolute classic without the blight of the black patch.

Oh and the less said about the way we revealed the shirt the better. Swansea invited fans into the stadium to see the full team line up in their new adidas away kit, we ask fans to hunt round the city centre to search for something they’ve never seen before and post hastily taken photos on Facebook. Marketing fail.

*It’s worth noting that the sponsor patch on the Cameron Stewart modelled shirt looks considerably smaller than the one being shown in the City Centre. Cameron’s looks to have been digitally added onto a plain shirt. Can we have the plain one please?

The ability to service that debt was significantly impaired by relegation from the Premier League at the end of the 2009/2010 season and the resulting precipitous drop in television revenues, heightening the imperative for belt tightening and cost cutting.

Following Duffen out of the door were many players signed during his tenure on eye-watering salaries that had the accountant liberally applying red ink to the books, as the club attempted to make ends meet.

Replica shirt sales could have generated some much needed income during the idle summer months but that opportunity was denied because of another misjudgement by the syrup wearing Southerner.

After Duffen had negotiated a deal for German sportswear goliath adidas to replace Umbro as kit supplier, he approved mass production of a prototype home shirt that was black and a very un-Cityesque yellow gold rather than amber.

Adam Pearson, brought back by owner Russell Bartlett to stave off financial ruin, rectified the error, but the tone change delayed production and the Tiger Leisure retail outlets didn’t take deliveries of home shirts until the day before the new season kicked off.

2010/2011 would not represent the first time City had worn adidas, for the brand’s iconic three stripes adorned the shirts, shorts and socks of the Tigers back in 1980-1982, when as now we would wear a home shirt featuring stripes and an all white away kit.

The new uniform set was first revealed at the club’s summer open day on July 10th when Nick Barmby and Craig Fagan stepped onto the on the KC Stadium pitch modelling the home kit and away strip respectively.

The home shirt follows the ‘Stricon’ template also used by Stoke, Plymouth, Partizan Belgrade and surprise World Club Championship finalists TP Mazembe of Congo. It features an amber yoke panel (made of the moisture dissipating fabric ClimaCool) that forms much of the collar before sweeping across the shoulders and giving way to a thin V-neck at the front.

Modified V-neck and ClimaCool yoke panel detail

The main chest panel is striped, but instead of solid black stripes these have fuzzy edges, like motorcycle tracks. There are no stripes on the back of the shirt though, which until player ID and secondary sponsor appliqués are added looks starkly plain, and very similar to the back of Umbro’s 2007/2008 shirt.

The three stripes of adidas feature on the shoulders and arms but are broken where the yoke panel ends, resuming further down the sleeves. The plain interconnecting panel is for competition logo patches, allowing them to be applied evenly to the shirt sleeves rather than straddling the individually stitched on black stripes.

The adidas performance logo is situated high on the left shoulder (as viewed), stitched in black onto the yoke panel, whereas the club crest is heat bonded over the heart at the top of the main front panel. The felt appliqué is two-layered to make the flocked tiger head ‘pop’ in contrast to the textured amber escutcheon.

Layered crest applique and ‘fuzzy edge’ stripe detail

For a second year running the URL of sponsor totesport is emblazoned across the front of our home shirts, though thankfully no longer in the Horseracing Totalisator Board’s corporate colours. ‘Red and green should never be seen’ [together] goes the fashion idiom, and certainly not atop amber and black.

Instead the wordmark is applied in white text with a black outline, a definite aesthetic improvement on 2009/2010. Sadly, the superfluous .com suffix returns, right justified underneath the company name, creating a needless asymmetric and unbalanced look.

To assuage financial concerns aesthetics were further sacrificed (along with Totesport’s exclusivity) by the addition of, not just one, but two extra corporate logos to the playing kit. Only one kit sponsor is permitted in the Premier League, but back under the aegis of the Football League (who relaxed rules in 2006) City could negotiate deals for a secondary shirt sponsor and back of shorts sponsor.

When the Tigers last had a back of shirt sponsor (during the 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 seasons), the wordmark of Gemtec was displayed underneath the numbers. In 2010/2011 however, the player names and numbers were lowered to accommodate screened on ads for ambulance-chasing compensation-hounds Neil Hudgell Law.

As for the shorts, they transformed player’s backsides into billboards, touting the wares of Scientific Laboratory Supplies Ltd. of Hessle (quote Craig Fagan’s arse when you call and they’ll knock 10% off motorised pipettes).

Secondary shirt and arse sponsors detail

The black pants feature the adidas stripes in amber on each side, starting a few inches down the leg because of a separate ClimaCool panel added below the waistband for greater freedom of movement and moisture control at a key sweat point (arsecrack). A thin amber strip across the seam is the only contrast detail on the back of the shorts (till the white SLS logo is screened onto the left leg of player’s pants)

The home kit is completed by black socks featuring adidas’ marks, the performance logo on the shins and three stripes on the foldover band, in contrast amber.

Early reaction from the internet chattering classes was frosty, the indistinct stripes were not received well, nor the stripes appearing only on the front of the shirt, making front and back look like totally different designs.

The Tiger Leisure site graphic used upon the home shirt’s release

Some voiced/typed objection to City being given the same template as Stoke, given the animosity that had developed between the Tigers and Potters since both teams made it to the Premier League in 2008. However, some of the biggest clubs in the world share designs, such as Chelsea and Bayern Munich in 2009/2010, or Paris St Germain and Celtic (away) in 2010/2011. If they don’t get exclusive designs, we shouldn’t expect Hull City to.

The most over the top criticism was aimed at adidas when the Tiger Leisure website initially listed the shirt’s predominant colourway as ‘sonic gold’ instead of amber. While it’s fair to say that some common sense should have been used by whoever updated the Tiger Leisure site with the new home kit details, it isn’t reasonable to have expected adidas to use amber as a tone description when deciding palette nomenclature years before the current deal with City was done. It’s not as if Hull City’s ‘amber’ is always the same thing anyway, it was quite orangey in 1998/1999, yet mustard yellow in 2000/2001.

If you decided to paint your living room amber and went to B&Q in a City shirt to find a paint to match, you’re unlikely to find the word amber used, Crown or Dulux probably call it Burnt cornfield or Cadmium firefly or Irradiated catpiss or summat. The shade used by adidas is slightly brighter than that used by Umbro, but it is for all intents and purposes amber, regardless of what the press release termed it.

Showcasing a new home kit in the Billy Bly Memorial Trophy match has become a bit of a tradition, and though we played the first pre-season of the 2010 pre-season at Winterton two days earlier, we did so in the away kit, reserving the home kit for the 6-0 win over North Ferriby United at their Church Road home on 14th Jul 2010. It’s first competitive outing came on the opening day of the 2010/2011 Football League Championship campaign, with City registering a 2-0 win over Swansea at the KC Stadium on Saturday 7th August.

Unlike the home kit, the new away strip was released on schedule. First glimpsed on the club’s official website on 3rd July 2010, it was available to buy from Tiger Leisure a week later on Saturday 10th July.

Whereas the adidas supplied white Tigers away kit from 1980-1982 had exclusively black trim (collar, sleeve cuffs and brand marks), the 2010/2011 version used amber as a contrast colour, making it look less generic and more custom made for City.

The ‘Regista’ template shirt is the same that was used by Nigeria during the 2010 World Cup, featuring a simple round neck with a thin contrast hem.

The adidas performance logo is centrally located underneath the collar in amber stitching, but the the club crest is over the heart, using the same heat bonded, two layered appliqué as the home kit (indeed, all the adidas garments produced for City, from training sweatshirts to bench coats, use the same adornment).

The shirt’s raglan sleeves are decorated with the adidas three stripes in amber across the shoulder and feature an exposed stitching pattern on the arms that serves to break up the stripes and frame the competition patch. This amber zig-zag stitching continues under the arms from the intersection of sleeve and body panels, with two lines running parallel down to the hem.

Totesport’s logo appears on the chest in the company’s green and red livery, but the .com suffix used on the home jersey is absent (as occurred on the 2009/2010 away shirt). In common with the home shirt, the logo of secondary shirt sponsors Neil Hudgell Law appears on the back of the players shirts but replicas are sold without it, Tiger Leisure will iron on a transfer for anyone soulless enough to want one, though.

The jersey is paired with white ‘Equipo’ shorts that feature a sculpted fabric cut designed to follow the curve of the body for freedom of movement (as part of the adidas ‘ForMotion’ technology system). The exposed stitching that decorates the shirt is replicated here, running the length of the curved cut from waistband to hem and truncating the three stripes on each side.

The ForMotion wordmark appears on the back of the right leg just above the hem, and on players shorts the logo of SLS is screened onto the back of the left leg in black. The ensemble is completed by white socks with the adidas performance logo on the shin and three stripes on the foldover band, both in amber.

The shade of amber used for trim, described by adidas as ‘collegiate gold’, is deeper than that featured on the home kit for increased contrast. Amber can look washed out against white if it’s a light shade, so a slightly orangier tone is used. adidas are not the first to have done this, the primarily white away kits of Olympic (1998/1999), Patrick (2002/2003) and Umbro 2007/2008) all utilised a shade from the dark end of the amber spectrum for contrast trim.

The full change kit was used only four times in 2010/2011, at Norwich, Sheffield United, Crystal Palace and Watford, though elements of the away kit were used in a further 12 games. Fiat Multipla faced former player and first year kitman John Eyre inexplicably chose to mix and match home and away kits in games where there was no colour clash.

Home shirts with away shorts and socks at Doncaster

Home shirts and socks with away shorts at Derby

Away shirts and socks with home shorts at Middlesbrough

Away shirts with home shorts and socks at Portsmouth

At Cardiff, Portsmouth and Ipswich we paired the white away jerseys with the black home shorts, an unnecessary step as those sides wear blue shirts and white shorts, meaning we could have just worn our full first choice kit. We did the same at Burnley and Scunthorpe (both wear claret, blue and white), and at Barnsley and Middlesbrough (both red and white, no clash with black and amber).  The game on Teeside was played on a snow covered pitch and  intermittently hampered by blizzards. It can’t have been easy for the players to pick each other out when wearing snow-camouflage white shirts and socks. Either John Eyre suffers from deuteranopia, the colour vision deficiency, or he just likes messing up our visual identity.

In previous years we’ve had alternate amber shorts (2001/2002 and 2006/2007) and socks (2007/2008) produced to allow use of the home shirt against sides wearing dark shorts and socks.

With no adidas amber alternates ordered, The Tigers wore white shorts with the home shirts at Brentford, Doncaster, Preston and Derby. John Eyre could possibly be exempt from blame in these cases if the referee deemed there was a clash, nonetheless the change was inconsistently applied.

Brentford and Sheffield United wear similar garb, red and white striped shirts with black shorts, yet at Brentford we mixed home shirt and white shorts while wearing the full away kit at Bramall Lane.

At Millwall, the first away game of the Championship campaign, we used the white socks with the home shirt and shorts to distinguish the legs of our players from those of the navy blue stockinged Lions.

Throughout club history, City have predominantly matched black socks with striped shirts, but using amber socks (as we did in 2004/2005 and 2005/2006) would drastically reduce sock clash potential and prevent a repeat of the ridiculous combination sported at The Den. Better yet would be amber and black hooped socks, last worn in 1963, they would be near clash proof.

Three keeper kits were worn in 2010/2011, all using the ‘Condivo’ jersey which used ‘ForMotion’ sculptured cut panels for superior fit and had assymetrical piping detail on the left side (as worn). The primary kit was all black, with white adidas stripes on the shirt arms, shorts and socks, and yellow piped trim on the arms and along the left main body panel, running from collar to hem. This was the only keeper shirt available to buy as a replica.

A yellow jersey with black stripes and piping was occasionally paired with black shorts and yellow socks for away games in which outfield players wore away shirts, this keeper top had no .com suffix on the sponsor, in keeping with the white outfield jerseys.

Just once, at Preston, Vito Mannone sported an all red kit with white stripes and black trim as North End’s keeper donned black shorts and socks while City wore the amber and black home shirt.

The red jersey may also have been a nod to ‘Poppy day’, as the game was played on Friday 11th November, Remembrance Day.

All outfield player’s shirts had a poppy motif attached over the right breast (as worn), as seen on Richard Garcia, right.

More temporary patches appeared in March, this one marking ‘Marie Curie Football Week’, a  League-wide initiative.

The blue rectangular patches featured the text ‘Marie Curie Cancer Care’ and the charity’s  daffodil emblem, and appeared on the shirts of all 72 Football League clubs in games played between the 7th to 13th March.

For City, that meant the away win at Coventry and the home defeat against Burnley, a game additionally marked by a  bizarre half time penalty shoot out that pitted a spot-kick taking daffodil against a goalkeeping anthropomorphised cigarette, named Cyril the cig.

The shirts were later auctioned off on Ebay with proceeds going towards the care provider for terminally ill patients.

The Marie Curie patch can be seen on the shirt of Corry Evans, left.

Les Motherby

The Tigers’ first top flight campaign had been somewhat Icarus like, we flew close to the sun (third in the league table if you’ll indulge the metaphor) early on and our wings made of wax melted, leaving us plummeting towards the ground (the relegation spots). However, we would narrowly avoid impact with the floor and defy all expectations by retaining top flight status at Newcastle’s expense, meaning the Geordies and not us would trade triangular Premier League sleeve patches for rectangular Football League appliqués for their 2009-2010 kits.

The club’s deal with Umbro was entering its third and final year, but their new offerings would not bear the brand marks of the KCOM group as the last two years Umbro City shirts had. The  Karoo / Kingston Communications shirt deal had expired and in the midst of an economic slump they elected not to renew, though their stadium naming rights deal would continue.

Sports360, an agency specialising in brokering pitchside advertising deals for professional sports clubs, were tasked with finding a suitably high profile company to sponsor the still Premier League Tigers.

Our new main sponsor would be ToteSport, the high street and internet trading arm of the Horseracing Totalisator Board, the state controlled bookmakers. The two year deal was announced on June 30th 2009, the same day the new playing kits (the home kit is seen on Kamil Zayatte, above) were unveiled.  

In the run up to the unveiling, the club’s official website featured a teaser graphic (shown below) which showed Geovanni and Jimmy Bullard, wearing the home and away kits respectively, but with all but a tiny part of each kit hidden in shadow, as if photographed on the dark side of the moon.  It was evident however that our new home shirt was largely amber and the away kit was a light shade of blue.

This teaser image appeared on the OWS a week before the kit launch

Messageboard chatter suggested remaining with stripes was preferable  to many Tiger Nationals, the rationale being that the world had seen us cutting a swath through the Premier League in the early months in stripes, and  if we were to create a globally recognisable identity, keeping stripes would help achieve that. It would also differentiate us from Wolverhampton Wanderers, who’d just been promoted to the Premier League.

Indeed when the home shirt was revealed, the initial response appeared to be ‘it looks nice, but we’ll look  a bit  like Wolves’. The largely amber shirt featured black pinstripe detail and a simple V-neck collar that was black split by a single amber stripe. This shirt definitely had a retro look to it, with some noting similarities to Umbro’s Wolves shirt from 1982-1983. It was undoubtedly similar (and throughout the years City and Wolves have had several not-dissimilar uniforms, particularly in the mid-Sixties and early-Seventies), however it is clear that the new design was loosely based on some of our own kits from the Eighties.

V-neck, crest and inside collar motif detail

This shirt was undoubtedly a tip of the hat to the Admiral pinstriped shirts worn during 1982-1983/1983-1984 (the main colour of which was a single, matte tone of amber) and 1984-1985/1985-1996 (which were modified to include two tones of amber, with matte and shiny ambers alternating between the pinstripes).

The big difference of course, is that those Eighties City jerseys had red pinstripes rather than black. Such was Don Robinson’s fondness for the sanguine hue that it became part of our colour palette from 1982 until 1990, when we reverted back to just black and amber. With red (thankfully) no longer a City colour, the pinstripes for 2009-2010 would be black, regardless of what Wolves once wore.

Back of collar panel with club nickname print

The separate collar panel at the back of the shirt features some neat club specific detailing on both sides. On the inside the club crest sits inside an ornate floral pattern, flanked by text detailing the garments’ lifespan (Kick off 2009, Full time 2010). On the outside is a simple ‘THE TIGERS’ transfer in a Times New Roman-esque font with exaggerated serifs.

The sponsors’ branding (Totesport advertised their website on our home shirt but omitted the .com suffix on the away shirt) appeared in the company’s colours of green and red. The colours that should ‘never be seen’ together would, you’d expect, look quite jarring on an amber background, but it didn’t look so bad, perhaps because the shade of green used is quite muted. A garish, bright green is part of Totesport’s palette but it serves as a background to the darker tone of green used on the wordmark.

Mesh underam ventilation panels

Though the shirt had a distinctly retro look, it was nonetheless packed with sneaky technical features, such as the black mesh panels for ventilation situated under the arms and at the base of the back. The body of the shirt was constructed of Umbro’s ‘Trilogy’ fabric, a three layered, chemically treated polyester designed to wick away sweat, a fact announced by the inclusion of Umbro’s ‘Climate Control’ logo on the hem of the back panel.

Completing the ensemble were black shorts that had amber mesh side panels starting halfway down the thigh, contrasting the black vents of the shirts, and amber socks with what must logically be described as black ‘pinhoops’.

Umbro’s ‘Climate Control’ mark appeared at the base of the shirt

The new kits were first worn in action at Church Road, North Ferriby, in the yearly Billy Bly Memorial Trophy match, with City wearing the home kit for the first half, and the blue away strip in the second half.  North Ferriby joined in the fashion show too, wearing their impressive new green and white adidas home kit in the first 45, before donning their yellow and black change clobber in the second half. Later in July City wore the home kit for pre season games at Winterton and Sheffield Wednesday before unveiling a unique version for two games played a little further afield.

The Tigers played two games in China, drawing 1-1 after 90 minutes with Beijing Guoan before advancing on penalties to the ‘final’, which was lost 3-0 to Spurs. Since betting is frowned upon by the Chinese state and related advertising not permitted, all three English sides had to modify their shirts for use in the Asia Trophy. West Ham covered the logo of SBOBET with a patch carrying the mark of the Bobby Moore Fund, a club affiliated cancer charity, whereas both Spurs and City, sponsored by Mansion online casinos and Totesport respectively, sported shirts free of a main sponsor’s logo.

The sans-branding City shirts (as seen on George Boateng, above) looked great and more like the early-Eighties jerseys they were based on than those with the Totesport wordmark, which blighted all adult shirts available from Tiger Leisure. Not the kids shirts though, the club decided that young ‘uns shouldn’t be seen advertising gambling.

A Tiger Leisure staff member noted that kids often ask if they can have the sponsor put on their shirt, so they look like the players do, whereas many adults had requested a shirt without the sponsor. For contractual reasons the club were unable to stock sponsor free adult shirts, but some savvy supporters were able to pick one up on Ebay after a reputable kit shop in Hong Kong got hold of some of the unused (and still tagged) shirts taken to China by City. Those shirts were not the only rare garb available only on Ebay in 2009/2010 however. 

On November 8th, Remembrance Sunday, City hosted Stoke and for the first time had poppies affixed to each player’s shirt.  Underneath the Umbro double diamond logo was the legend ‘Hull City v. Stoke City, Barclays Premier League, 8th November 2009′ (seen on Jozy Altidore, left).

Only two Premier League sides decided against having poppies on their shirts, Manchester United and Liverpool reasoned that a red poppy wouldn’t be visible on a red jersey.

A logical argument,  but the sanctimony filled Daily Mail claimed this was somehow disrespectful to former servicemen, dubbing the non-incident ‘Poppygate’, wilfully ignoring both clubs marking Armistice Day in other ways, such as Liverpool’s  donating the shirts for auction.  

City too auctioned their shirts, each was listed on Ebay with the monies raised going to the Royal British Legion, the charity that provides financial and social support to former servicemen of the Armed Forces.

The week long auction raised a total of £8784.08, with Jimmy Bullard’s shirt fetching a staggering £1041.

The least popular shirt? £310 was paid for Matt Duke’s keeper jersey, a tenner less than Tony Warner’s, even though Duke played the game while Warner warmed the bench! Below is each starting players final shirt value…

The Premier League’s typeface, a slimmed down version of the Myriad Condensed font, was once again applied to the back of player’s shirts, this year black letters and numbers were used on the mostly amber shirts , whereas white had been used on the striped 2008/2009 jerseys.

With the signing of the indigestibly named Dutchman Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink, the club ordered the reduced size letters for his shirt (as seen used against Stoke, above right),  however full size letters were used for the games against Birmingham, Wigan and Portsmouth (above left). Players names are radially arched above numbers on City’s shirts but a tighter arch was initially needed for the man abbreviated to ’JVoH’ on messageboards.

Late in 2009, the staff bloggers on the official Umbro website began an attempt to catalogue every football jersey designed by the Manchester based firm. A page was created on Flickr, the online image hosting site, to display pictures of what Umbro termed their ‘Football Archive’, including the three shirts produced for City. The image used to represent the 2009/2010 Tigers design was of a prototype that not only had no sponsor’s mark, but also featured a design element that sadly didn’t make it to the final club approved version.

Embossed onto the left breast (as worn) is the City tiger’s head on its own, removed from the shield context that constitutes the club crest, which itself was applied at the centre of the large tiger head. Sunderland’s 2009/2010 Umbro shirt did contain such embossing, with their full crest ‘echoed’ behind the stitched on version. That implies that the decision to not run with such a feature was a club decision, rather than an Umbro call. Pity, it looks, as seen below, quite ace.

Whereas the new home kit’s release generated considerable discussion, the unveiling of the away strip (seen on Stephen Hunt, left) was met with a resounding ‘Meh’.

A largely monotone affair, the primary colour of the new change kit was described by Umbro as ‘Fusion blue’, which was also used on the training sweatshirts and jackets. The overlapping V-neck collar and underarm/shoulder ventilation panels are in constrasting navy blue.

Embossed double stripes run throughout the shirt, following an Umbro template evident on the  shirts of Birmingham City (home), Sunderland (away), Southampton (away) and the Premier League officials. Sponsor Totesport’s all lower case wordmark appears without the .com suffix in dark green and red.

Like the home shirt, the blue change jersey features a separate collar panel, which has the lifespan text and crest with heraldic floral background on the inside and ‘THE TIGERS’ transfer on the reverse.  The shorts are the same design as those worn at home, with a  mesh panel stripe starting halfway down the thigh, navy blue against the light blue main body .  The turnover band of the socks had one white and one fusion blue hoop sandwiched between two navy hoops.

Following the June 30th launch, The Tiger Leisure site advertised the away strip with a graphic of  Jimmy Bullard wearing it while standing under a spotlight, which rather amusingly made him look like he should be stood alongside Freddie Mercury, John Deacon, Roger Taylor and Brian May on the Queen II album cover.

I see a little silhouetto of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango?

The fusion blue get-up was debuted at North Ferriby in the second half of the Billy Bly Memorial Trophy game, making its competitive debut in a sartorially confusing game against Wolves at Molineux in late August. It was later used at Sunderland, Fulham, Bolton and Tottenham in the Premier League, and in a mid November, international break filling match against Atalanta in Bergamo, Italy for the Trofeo Achille e Cesare Bortolotti, a game that ended 2-2 after 90 minutes but was lost on penalties.

The ‘keepers had two kits to choose from, the first favoured by Bo Myhill and Matt Duke was dark green with lighter green accents. The body of the shirt had a gradiating design of equiangular polygons that looked like a fast paced but existentially dull game of Tetris where all the blocks are green hued lines. The strip seemingly favoured by Tony Warner was a two-tone grey affair that vaguely looked like a rejected uniform concept for the film Galaxy Quest .   

Les Motherby

Programme v. Scarborough

Replica shirts on sale in the club shop still featured the Pepis branding, (as did the shirts worn by the reserves, when Terry Dolan and Jeff Lee featured as subs for the depleted stiffs v. Newcastle’s second string, they did so advertising the ‘Marina palace’) though you could later take your shirt back and have a Needlers patch affixed.

Why you’d have wanted to is another matter, the patches made an ugly shirt uglier still and were heavier than dark matter.

Furthermore they didn’t respond well to repeated washing, as early as mid September several of players sported warped looking patches with heavily faded print.

The first two ‘Tigers’ matchday programmes of the season, though acknowledging Needlers as main club sponsors, featured action images from pre season games that had the Pepis logo airbrushed out.

The addition of the patches, though poorly executed, was at least a change that could be rationally explained, the club had changed main sponsor, but the next two changes didn’t make any sense whatsoever.

In January 1995 the Tigers switched the shorts worn with the home kit. The plain black shorts that the new pants replaced were quite understated, certainly contrasted to the busy shirt they accompanied, but for the Shrewsbury home game on January 7th and for the rest of the campaign City wore a new design. In isolation they were a decent pair of shorts, but they didn’t match the rest of the kit, on each side was a thick amber stripe that met a thinner amber hem band, but this amber, though a far truer  and brighter shade of our principle colour, was jarringly different from the Chinese curry coloured ‘amber’ parts of the shirt.

The body of the shorts featured thin tonal shadow stripes, contrasting matt and shiny blacks. Whereas the shorts used earlier in the season had Pelada’s circled P logo above their wordmark (with the letters loosely kerned), these just had the capitalised ‘Pelada’ in bigger letters that were more tightly kerned. Oddly, some pairs of shorts had the City crest on, but others didn’t (see Deano, below).

More change was to come, having tacked a chuffing great patch on the shirts and needlessly redesigned the shorts, only the stockings remained unaltered on this Franken-strip monstrosity.

The socks were a bit too yellow to begin with, but our hose became more yellow still in April when we ditched the black banded Pelada logoed  leggings for cheap looking, see through monotone replacements (as seen on Neil Mann at Brighton, left).

We now had three distinct shades of amber competing with each other on  this kit, ludicrous.

The Football League need to grant approval for any changes to the kit registered at the start of the season, they must have been sick of hearing from us in 1994-1995. Still, by April we were  finally done faffing with our garb, with only a handful of games left to play.

Two changes were made to the rather fetching jade, white and black away kit that became substantially less fetching when the behemothic Needlers applique was added to the shirt in time for the opening day gubbing at Oxford.

The jade kit was subsequently used (with the original black with white banded socks) at Brentford, Bradford and Cambridge (as seen on ‘Tricky Dicky’ Richard Peacock, below left).

Plain white socks were used at Bournemouth in February, (as seen on Ian Ormondroyd and Neil Mann below right) another change made just for the sake of change it seems, and on the last day of the season the jade shirt was paired with the home shorts at Blackpool, the day keeper Alan Fettis netted as an outfield substitute (as seen further below left).

As well as pointlessly redesigning the home shorts and faffing with the socks, Melton Mowbray based Pelada also created a limited edition 3rd shirt that was largely black with thin amber stripes flanking thicker white stripes.

It has been said that this shirt, which was sold in the club  in the run up to Christmas 1994, was designed at the behest of Needlers who until this point hadn’t had their logo on a shirt that was intended to carry it, it was never worn in match action however (though it’s seen below right on Dean Windass, for some reason stood on the Best Stand roof dressed as the world’s chavviest Santa). The Needlers branding was significantly smaller than on the home and away kits, though the scripted wordmark appeared in larger text, possible because the ‘torn sweet package’ background graphic was dispensed with here. If this version had been used on the main kits, the patch would have looked far better.

Even when not titting about up front as an emergency striker, Alan Fettis was not to be outdone on the garish kit stakes. When in goal he wore one of two jerseys made by keeper garb company Reusch (you couldn’t blame Pelada for this one, and since Roy Carroll wore the same design perhaps Pelada never made an keeper kits for City). The design was a collage of pixellated splotches that mimiced the effect of playing Space Invaders while in the grip of a bad acid trip. Both padded jerseys had the Needlers patch sewn on but didn’t carry the club crest.

Les Motherby

A premature end to the Sportscard deal left Hull City searching for a new main sponsor, and with a new sponsor comes a new set of kits. It was a shame to see the classy V-neck shirt of 2001-2002 dispensed with after just one season, but Patrick were obliged to design a replacement to carry the logotype of local electrical component suppliers Bonus, who reprised main sponsorship of the Tigers having had their name splashed on the Matchwinner made shirts of the early 1990′s, including the legendary/infamous ‘tiger skin’ jersey.

The new home kit would see active service for two full seasons (as Patrick’s first design was intended to) though it appeared in three distinct league campaigns having been unveiled and used at the end of 2001-2002. While not the most memorable of outfits from an aesthetic point of view, this kit has the unique distinction of being worn in competition at both Boothferry Park and the newly built Kingston Communications Stadium as well as being the primary uniform for our first promotion season in 19 years.  The new strip kept with the amber shirts/black shorts/ amber socks combination while adding a small amount of white trim.  

The shirt (worn by Ian Ashbee, above) featured a black turnover collar connected to an overlapping V neck, both with black and white stripe edges, and thick black underarm panels. Across each shoulder ran a sewn on black stripe panel with a thin white edge on one side.

The jersey was thinner and much looser fitting than it’s immediate predecessor, but featured the same sewn on amber shield containing the club crest and heat bonded Patrick name and two stripe ended P logo. The sponsor’s word mark was also heat bonded in felt, but whereas the 1990’s kits carried just the word Bonus, the 2000’s versions had  ‘Electrical’ added underneath in smaller lettering, with both words capitalised

The black shorts had a thick amber stripe on each side that roughly corresponded in width to the black underarm panel of the shirts, though the white piping that book-ended the amber panel made the overall stripe wider. The sewn on crest patch of the shorts had a black background the first time the kit was worn in May 2002, but for the 2002-2003 campaign the pants used featured the same amber background patches as the shirts. The black background returned in 2003-2004 though there were many instances of rogue amber shields being worn by individual players when everyone else had the correct black backgrounds. The shorts with the black shields had an amber P logo on the opposite side, but those carrying the amber shields had Patrick’s mark in white.

Dawson celebrates being the only player with an amber short patch

The socks stayed constant though, they were amber and had a black Patrick P logo on the shins. The black turnover band at the top of each stocking had an amber hoop with white ’feather-edge’ detail throughout.

Programme advert for the new shirt

During 2002-2003 it was worn in the old ground’s farewell game, a 1-0 defeat by Darlington (which pretty much typified the frustration and futility associated with ’FER ARK’ in it’s later years) as well as on the opening night of the KC Stadium when the Tigers entertained Sunderland in a friendly kickabout for the Raich Carter Trophy (and if Boothferry Park’s last game was a fitting defeat, the first game at the Circle was a sign of prosperous times to come) which City won 1-0.

The stadium move came shortly after Peter Taylor’s appointment as manager, and soon came on field excellence to match the salubrious new surroundings. The following season culminated in promotion as runners-up in Nationwide League Division Three.

A run of shirts with ‘Promotion Season 2003-2004’ embroidered  between the maker’s mark and crest were sold in the Tiger Leisure club shop but as they were produced after the final game against Bristol Rovers were never used by players. As with the previous kit, black numbers with silver trim were used on the shirts, and smaller, silver trimmed white numbers were added above Patrick’s logo on the shorts.

Black numbers were used on some amber alternate shorts that were the same design as the black home shorts but ‘negative images’ of them. These were used at Lincoln in 2003-2004, as seen on Damien Delaney and Lee Marshall, below.

Though the home kit would have a lifespan of two seasons, City elected to change away strips each year during the same period to bring in merchandising revenue. In 2002-2003 our change kit was mostly white, a somewhat traditional look for the Tigers on their travels, whereas for 2003-2004 we plumped for a decidedly contemporary all black affair, an ensemble that would become one of the most iconic City kits ever.

Following the summer 2002 announcement that City would wear white away from home if a colour clash occurred, some dimwitted Tiger Nationals speculated that this was chairman Adam Pearson giving a sartorial tip of the hat to his former employer Leeds United. This notion was complete and utter drivel, and wilfully ignored the fact that City had worn white away from home decades before Leeds switched to all white in 1961 in a nauseating attempt to mimic Real Madrid (they had previously worn the West Yorkshire city’s civic colours of blue and yellow, and before that sported Huddersfield-esque blue and white stripes.) The Tiger’s had worn away whites in recent years too, 1988-1989, 1992-1993, 1997-1998 and 1998-1999, all before Pearson’s involvement in the club.

The 2002-2003 version (seen on Fishlips, left) took certain cues from the home kit, such as the overlapped V-neck with turnover collar and loose fitting shirt styling, but added elaborately constructed shoulder and sleeve detailing. A thick and tapering amber piped navy blue yoke stripe extended across the shoulders to ends of the sleeves, where it ran parallel to the end of the underarm stripe made of the same thin mesh material, designed for ventilation.

The proportions of the crest shield, manufacturer and sponsors’s logotypes were the same as on the home shirt, only the felt and stitching were navy, and the crest shield background was white. The shorts and socks were both white with navy and amber stripe detail. This gleaming strip was first worn at Boothferry Park in  in a pre-season action against Bradford and first saw competitive use in City’s awesome 2-0 win at the Abbey Stadium, Cambridge, it was later used at Lincoln and Boston. Both shirt and shorts used Sporting i-D’s navy Football League branded numbers and letters.

The whites became a de facto third kit for 2003-2004 (and were used at Boston and Southend) when a new first choice change strip was introduced; an imposing, light absorbing black affair with amber trim.

An all black kit may seem an odd choice for a team that uses the darkest tone in it’s primary uniform, but so few teams wear colours that genuinely necessitate a change that it hardly mattered.

Indeed, whereas away kit use is usually limited to around three or four occasions a season, we wore this outfit whenever we could, (even in a home friendly against Middlesbrough, as seen right on ruddy cheeked Oirishman Damien Delaney) ostensibly just because it looked ace, and gave our players an authoritative, ‘not to be messed with’ presence.

The jersey had a simple overlapping V-neck collar with a thin amber tipping stripe on the outside edge. The front of the shirt is made up of two panels, between the two is amber piping that runs in a U shape across the stomach then upwards, parallel to the side seam, before curving underneath the arm. The bottom panel was aertex to give ventilation on the underarms.

First worn in a pre season friendly at Harrogate, it was used in the league away to Rochdale, Scunthorpe, Cheltenham, Carlisle, Mansfield, Kidderminster, Swansea, Macclesfield and most famously at Yeovil, when we secured our first promotion in nearly two decades with a 2-1 win at Huish Park.

The shot of a black-garbed Ian Ashbee, triumphantly celebrating his late winner with team mates, is the iconic image of our ascent from the basement division.

At York on Boxing Day 2003, the ref deemed City’s black away socks too similar in tone to York’s navy hosiery somade the Tigers play in the Minstermen’s red away socks, as seen on Andy Dawson below.


The club had intended to use amber letters and numbers with the black kit but Sporting-iD did not produce the Football League appliqués in that colour so we had to settle for white.

Three keeper  jerseys were used with these outfield kits, all the same design but in different colourways. Each was a thick knit affair with mesh venting for breathability.

A line of piping ran across the chest splitting the shirt into two panels, the upper panel on two of the kits was black with the panel under the piping a different tone, one was green, the other, more favoured shirt had a grey bottom panel. This was worn at some time by all four keepers who played in nets for City in 2003-2004, Alan Fettis, Paul Musselwhite, Boaz Myhill and on loan Dutchman Michel Kuipers.

The third design used one tone on both panels, a metallic blue-silver, but wasn’t used much beyond pre-season friendlies.

Les Motherby

After narrowly missing out on the play offs for two seasons running, the Tiger Nation hoped it would be a case of third time lucky for City in 1995-1996.

Ditching kit maker Pelada and their vile interpretation of tiger striped shirts, the club changed manufacturers, inviting Burnley based sportswear firm The Glory Years, who made Rochdale, Brighton, and Chesterfield’s kits as part of their ‘Super League’ brand, to design and make the Tigers attire for the next two somewhat eventful seasons.

Our new togs were throwbacks of sorts, visually similar to the to the heavy cotton drill garb worn by City in the late 1940′s , The Tigers wore sky blue and white as a post-war austerity measure as amber dye was deemed too expensive, the club returned to wearing amber and black in 1947.

Like that post-war kit the new strip was made up of plain amber shirts, black shorts and amber socks. Jerseys were not used to advertise the wares and services of sponsors back then of course, but compared to the tiger-skin shirted excesses of the previous four years, the new kit was a much more traditional effort. 

The new shirts (as modelled on the left by Dean Windass) featured a black turnover collar connected to a short placket that was fastened down with three press studs in place of buttons. As in the Forties the club’s tigers’ head crest (slightly more realistic looking these days than the emaciated post-war version) sat inside a sewn-on escutcheon on the left breast. The words HULL CITY sat above a smaller shield containing the tigers’ head and the initials A.F.C. On the right side lay a sewn-on patch with the name of the manufacturers’ brand SUPER LEAGUE. The shirt’s sleeves had a black piped seam and inch above folded amber cuffs.

A new two year sponsorship deal with local haulage firm International Bulk Carriers was signed and their initials, IBC, appeared on the chest of our players in red felt. A quite lovely shadow pattern ran through the shirt, with repeated tigers’ heads in front of double pinstripes.

Sewn on crest and shadow pattern

The black shorts also carried the shadow pattern, and amber piping an inch above the leg opening corresponded to the contrasting black piping on the shirt sleeves. The tigers’ head logo carrying shield was slightly smaller on the shorts than that of the shirt. Amber socks (that were a few shades lighter than the shirt) completed the kit, the turnover tops had two amber hoops at the base.

Super League’s version of amber was a little more yellowish than we’d been used to and the sponsor’s abbreviated moniker might have looked better in black rather than red, but this was nonetheless a lovely kit (and the most comfortable of City replicas ever). It will, unfortunately, forever be associated with abject failure, but that’s what you get when the players filling the shirts are of the ilk of Simon Trevitt.

Superstitious fans will tell you that striped shirts are unlucky and that the Tigers enjoy their most successful seasons when wearing plain amber jerseys. Well, that notion was shown to be complete and utter bollocks as City consecutively posted their worst season records to date while wearing this kit.

First worn in a pre-season friendly versus Grimsby at Boothferry Park, the new get-up made its competitive debut on the opening day of 1995-1996 new campaign, City, starting as they meant to go on, succumbed to a 1-0 home defeat to Swindon.

The first team in the land to be relegated in 1996, City finished bottom of Nationwide League Division Two, returning to the basement division for the second time in their history after a thirteen year absence. Super League? Not quite. The Tigers plumbed new depths in 1996-1997, with manager Terry ‘Fuckwit’ Dolan leading us to seventeenth place in Division Three, before belatedly being shown the door by new owners. Bah.

The away kit for this miserable two season period was a quite unconventional but rather fetching all maroon/dark red affair (as worn by Andy Williams, below right; and by Spanish defender Antonio Doncel, below left).

The same base design as the home kit, the shirts turnover collar was amber, as was the sponsor’s name, though after a few washes the felt letters took on a yellow hue. Both the shirt (sleeves) and shorts had amber piping near the hems and the pinstripes/tigers head shadow pattern ran throughout both garments. The maroon socks had an amber turnover band with maroon hoops. Under floodlights, this strip appeared a devilish, blood red and it was so aesthetically pleasing that even Greg Rioch looked good in it.

It’s most notable use came in a League Cup tie at then Premier League Coventry City in September 1995, later being worn at Brighton and against Whitby (in an FA Cup tie played in Scarborough), though the shirt gained far greater prominence in the Nickleodeon UK show ‘Renford Rejects’, about a five-a-side school team who’s captain Jason Summerbee wore the shirt in almost every episode.

There was a seldom used third kit produced, a totally white number save for the manufacturers logo, club crest and sponsors patch. This minimalistic beauty (worn below by manager Terry Dolan and Neil Allinson, below) was lamentably not available to buy in the club shop and of it El Tel once remarked “players feel pure in white. That’s PURE in capital letters”. Regardless of the slap-headed moron’s nonsensical views, this was a beautiful kit that deserved greater use.

His tactics were ugly, but Terry Dolan looked smooth in the all white third kit

It was worn against Bradford during the 1995-1996 campaign in a 1-1 draw at Valley Parade and a version with black letters spelling out sponsor IBC’s name was paired with black socks at Lincoln in 1996-1997.

There were two goalkeeper jerseys designed for use during 1995-1996 and 1996-1997, one dark blue, the other was standard goalie issue pea green.

The latter shirt looked fine when paired with black shorts, however on away trips Roy Carroll and Steve Wilson paired it with the maroon away shorts, ignoring the age old advice that red and green should never be seen.

Whilst dimwits such as Andy Brown looked sartorially splendid in all maroon, the keeper (like poor old Willo, seen below left) plied his trade looking like an odd mixture of snot and blood, the kind usually seen on the upper lips of Scottish tramps on Ferensway.

Super League did a pretty good job providing City with simple, stylish replacements to the tiger striped horrors that had gone before, but they were powerless to prevent the on-field horrors of those who wore their garments.

Les Motherby / Daniel Lodge

.

Overnight, the club’s profile increased exponentially to hitherto unseen levels. City, who once only made national headlines for narrowly staving off bankruptcy, were now being touted as a ’global brand’ that could shift a glut of replica shirts in the Far East. Blimey.

With the eyes of the world now supposedly upon us, breath was bated in anticipation of a high profile kit launch.

In the past, the release of a new home kit may have warranted a photograph on the back page of the Hull Daily Mail at the most, not any more. A ‘global brand’ has teaser campaigns, pre ordering and press conferences to mark the arrival of new polyester garments.  During the summer, Umbro ran a series of ‘teaser’ adverts on both the club’s official website and Tiger Leisure webstore.

The ads, featuring either a newly inked Caleb Folan or Ian Ashbee, showed the players holding up a shirt-obscuring placard bearing the numbers 040708 (the release date was the 4th July). The new shorts and socks were on full display but the shirt was largely unseen, though enough of it was visible to give away that our first top flight campaign would be played mostly in traditional stripes, huzzah! All was revealed on Friday July 4th, when Ashbee and Folan dispensed with the placards to show off the new kit (as seen on Geovanni, above) in all its glory, and it is indeed glorious.

The Tiger Leisure website featured this home kit teaser campaign graphic

The shirt features a simple round neck, connected to set-in sleeves by a black shoulder yoke panel. A black centre stripe allowed the mostly amber club crest to sit on a black stripe, as did the high white Umbro double diamond sewn on the left side. A pinstriped, connected diamonds transfer sits at the base of each sleeve within the central black stripe.

The wordmark of main sponsor Karoo is heat bonded in white lettering across the chest, using much larger text than appeared on the 2007-2008 home shirt. This meant the letters overlapped the shirts stripes, when reducing the amount of space between letters and having each letter occupy a single stripe would have looked far neater.

The black shorts, quite long in length, featured the same pinstriped diamonds motif as the shirt sleeves and thin, curved amber slash detailing on each side seam. The matching black socks with amber turnover tops had the Umbro logo above an amber band filled with repeating black solid diamonds.

First used at North Ferriby during the annual Billy Bly Trophy game, later at KV Oostende, Chesterfield, Crewe, Oldham and Heart of Midlothian, the kits used in pre-season featured no player names and used Umbro designed numbers. Premier League numbers, letters and sleeve patches were added to the jerseys worn with pride on opening day, when City marked their top tier debut with a 2-1 win over Fulham.

Pre-season Umbro numbers (left) and Premier League typography (right)

So distinct is our amber and black colour scheme in the Premier League that we rarely had a genuine need to wear an ‘away’ kit, and even when a home side’s dark socks threatened a colour clash with our black legwear, we had that covered, breaking out solid amber stockings so we could still wear our primary ‘uniforms’ away. The amber socks were first seen at Tottenham and were subsequently used at Manchester United and Portsmouth. Considering how dark the black stripes on the shirt make the overall kit look, amber socks would have been a good choice to wear at home too.

An amber socked Geovanni during the Manchester United away game

This was nonetheless a bold and beautiful looking kit (some grumbled that it was similar to the Diadora 2006-2007 kit, but since that was lovely too there’s little complaint here) and unsurprisingly proved a big seller. Umbro struggled to keep up with demand and after the initial stock and pre-holidays re-up was quickly sold, Tiger Leisure was often bereft of adult sized replica shirts, much to the commercial department’s chagrin.

The away kit for our first top flight campaign was launched well before we knew what division we’d be wearing it in.

A teaser campaign (later replicated for the home kit launch) began on 1st April 2008, ahead of the unveiling eleven days later when the new shirts could be pre-ordered, three weeks before they dropped in the Tiger Leisure stores for sale on Saturday 3rd May.

Consequently, the 2008-2009 away shirts were worn by fans at the last games of the 2007-2008 season, including the Wembley play off final.

The kit (as seen on Bernard Mendy, right)was all grey, or ‘flint’ as Umbro describe it, with amber and black trim. The v-neck collar is finished with a thin two-tone seam, amber on the left side (as viewed) merging into black that overlaps the amber at the point of the ‘V’. A thick black wavy line with amber piping runs from each shoulder down to a point just underneath the sponsor’s marks.

Both the Umbro diamonds mark and club crest are centrally positioned, the former atop the latter, with both sitting above the sponsor’s logo and typeface.

The practice of advertising different KCOM branded services on the home and away shirts continued in 2008-2009.

As on the home shirt, the sponsor’s name, Kingston Communications, is spelt out in considerably larger type than on the previous year’s design. Less is not more for KCOM.

An oblique, shadow pinstripe runs across the front panel of the shirt, but the back panel features an elaborate shadow pattern made up of thinner material, designed to provide ventilation and sweat wicking across the shoulders and back. At the base of the sleeves are pinstriped connected diamonds in amber, and the sleeve cuffs are bound by a black hem with amber piping.

Caleb Folan teases us in the run up to the 2008-2009 away kit launch

The shorts and socks were effectively flint versions of those used at home featured the same amber detailing. The shorts though had an additional black line attached to the curved amber ‘slashes’ on the side seams to correspond with the detail on the shirts.

The back of the shirt features a 'zonal bodymap mesh design' for ventilation

The grey change kit was first worn at Winterton Rangers in a pre-season friendly, with the first competitive outing coming in August at Swansea in the 2-1 (a.e.t.) League Cup defeat.

In late September, a somewhat embarrassing episode at Newcastle saw us wearing the Geordies’ adidas away shorts and socks, after the referee deemed our grey shorts and socks not sufficiently distinguishable from the home side’s black pants and legwear. The last instance of wearing another team’s away shorts to avoid a colour clash also occurred in the North-East, at Darlington eight years prior. That was in Division Three, you’d expect us to be more diligent as a Premier League team, evidently not.

Marlon King, sporting Newcastle shorts and socks, scores from the spot

A 0-0 draw in the FA Cup Third Round with Newcastle meant another trip to St. James’ Park for a replay, and noting the earlier shorts and socks snafu Phil Brown told KCFM “We have got a massive problem – we don’t have a third-choice strip, we can’t wear our home kit and we can’t wear our away. Hopefully Umbro can come up with something.”

Other media outlets implied Umbro were working on designing a brand new 3rd kit for use, but the solution was a little more mundane. They found enough of last season’s all white away kit, last used in the Championship play offs semi-final first leg at Watford, for the match and added Premier League patches and numbers (somewhat unnecessary as this was an FA Cup match and not a Premier League fixture) for use in the 1-0 win.

The 2007-2008 away kit gets an encore in 2008-2009 at St. James' Park

In total the grey kit was used just six times in competitive action: – the aforementioned games at Swansea and Newcastle (shirt only), also at Stoke, Sheffield United (FA Cup 5th round) Fulham and at Sunderland.

The 2008-2009 goalkeeper jersey, a light blue/jade affair (Described as ‘Aquarius’ by Umbro) went largely unused by Bo Myhill and Matt Duke in Premier League games, they preferred the previous year’s design in green or light grey.

Tony Warner donned the light blue/jade jersey (with Karoo sponsor) in the FA Cup 4th Round tie versus Millwall though and Bo Myhill wore the Kingston Communications branded version in the 5th Round tie at Sheffield United.

Les Motherby

The club’s fairly new owners declared that the team’s performances as they staved off relegation in the latter half of 1998-1999 were ‘promotion form’ and that if replicated we could be leaving the basement division via the promotion hatch, rather than the relegation trapdoor, putting somewhat unfair pressure on the rookie manager.

The club ditched Olympic and their vile ‘spilt Tango’ shirt and installed Avec as the new kit manufacturer. Avec had previously made shirts for  Sheffield United, and since City’s new commercial manager had held the same role at Bramall Lane, it was perhaps inevitable he would use a company he was familiar with to produce playing and training wear for the next two seasons.

For the first time, the design of the Tigers’ on-field apparel was decided by a supporter ballot. A matchday programme late in the 1998-1999 season featured images of four kits, three designed by Avec, and one by the nepotistically appointed nephew of crooked (and convicted company law criminal) Vice President, Stephen Leonard Hinchliffe.

That design (choice D) was tremendously naff, featuring childish spiky tiger stripes randomly scattered across a plain round necked amber shirt.

Alleged graphic design student James Hinchliffe’s reviled club crest was also present, featuring a tiger’s head seemingly comprised of a clipart crab with a circumcised penis for a nose. That logo also blemished the three Avec designs, all of which were neat and aesthetically pleasing, club crest notwithstanding.

The four kit vote choices as they appeared in the matchday programme

The four kit vote choices as they appeared in the matchday programme. The shirt of kit choice A was mostly amber, with a black stripe running along the shoulder yoke, and a black V-neck collar with white and amber trim. Kit B’s jersey was also plain amber, with black ‘shard’ shapes on the arms, and a curvy, tapering stripe on the left side of the chest.

The winner though was Kit C, a lovely, bold striped affair (as worn by Gary Brabin, top left). The conceptual drawing featured a raglan sleeved, black V-necked shirt with amber and white trim, and the inner stripes were cut off mid-chest so the sponsor’s typeface sat on a plain amber section. Other details included the Avec logo printed into the material (though the club crest patch was sewn on), a stitched on rectangular ‘authentic merchandise’ tag at the bottom left of the front panel (which termed us Hull City FC rather than AFC), and a small red ‘Avec sport’ tag on the right side seams.

Kit C won with 34% of votes, we used this plain 'amber' strip till it was ready

Kit C won with 34% of votes, we used this plain ‘amber’ strip till it was ready Though the initial designs had the wordmark of the University of Hull within a black box on the chest, the esteemed house of learning decided in the summer that their sponsorship deal had ran its course and they’d not be renewing, so IBC took their place, becoming main club sponsor for a second time, having had their logo on City’s jerseys between 1995 and 1997. You would have thought the haulage firm’s initials in red would have looked out of place and sullied the black and amber striped jersey, but not so, it looked fine and rather striking.

The name of the club’s principal commercial partner was not the only change from the original design evident on the shirts that went on sale at that summer’s open day, these were crew necked, and not as originally advertised, V-necked. A new element, unable to be shown on the crude, original rendering was a discreet plaid weave pattern that ran throughout both the jersey and shorts, though it was more pronounced on the pants. The shorts and socks, completing the home kit ensemble, were both black and trimmed with one white and one amber stripe matching the design on the shirts’ collar.

Close-ups of the maker's logo, Hinchliffe crest, sponsor, sewn hem patch and seam tag

Close-ups of the maker’s logo, Hinchliffe crest, sponsor, sewn hem patch and seam tag The full, first choice kit was not worn until 10th August in a League Cup first round, first leg tie away to Rotherham. The new strip was not available to wear in pre-season (due to the late sponsor change), instead we faced Bradford City, North Ferriby, Winsford, Bury and Scarborough wearing an odd all amber (though it was a very pale, washed out amber) pyjama resembling outfit that bore no club crest or sponsors logo, and the only distinguishing marks were Avec’s name on the jerseys and their stylised letter A (which looks like it was designed by Klingon calligraphers) on each sock at shin level.

Not the start of a purple patch

Though the Tigers sported their new striped shirts at Exeter on the first day of the new League campaign, our kit man evidently hadn’t realised that the Grecians wear black shorts and socks, so City were compelled to wear the Exe-Men’s away pants and legwear (as seen on Colin Alcide, right).

On a brilliantly sunny day, those hardy Tiger Nationals who’d ventured South-Westwards looked on aghast, as their team, looking foolish in amber and black shirts paired with deep purple shorts and socks, succumbed to a 1-0 defeat.

The season’s opening day wasn’t the only time City played away wearing purple socks in 1999-2000, though thankfully the other occasions didn’t necessitate us going on the scrounge, as the regal tone was the primary colour of that season’s change kit.

This strip (as seen on Mark Greaves, below left) was lovely, and ranks among the most visually pleasant away kits that the Tigers have ever worn.

The purple jersey featured an overlapping V-neck collar with white stripe trim, and the shirt’s raglan sleeves had red piping stitched in between the body and arm panels. Whereas the home shirt had the red IBC logotype woven into the fabric, the away top had each letter separately heat bonded onto the chest in felt.

Another difference was Avec’s logo, embroidered in white cotton here rather than woven in as on the first choice jersey. As on the home kit there was a black and amber ‘authentic merchandise’ tag at the base of the shirt (right side) that wasn’t seen if the player tucked his shirt into his shorts, and a small red ‘Avec sport’ tag on the left side seam.

The away shorts were white with a thick purple stripe, flanked by red piping, on each side. Red drawstrings were visible as they exited the elasticated waistband on the outside of the shorts rather than the inside.

The plaid weave shadow pattern of the home shirt and shorts was also evident on those of the change kit. The socks were purple with one white and one red stripe on the turnover band and at shin level was Avec’s ‘Klingon A’ symbol, woven in. First worn mid September at Torquay, the delicious change strip was later used at Barnet, Hayes (F.A. Cup), Shrewsbury and Mansfield.

The two keeper jerseys, one green and one blue, were identical in design, each with lighter shaded bands across the chest in which sat the sponsor’s logo, and a grid design across the shoulders and upper chest. Steve Wilson (seen right) preferred the green version, while red card collector Lee Bracey favoured the blue effort.

1999-2000 saw the introduction of squad numbers and player’s names on the back of shirts for Football League teams. The Premier League had adopted the practice back in its second season, 1993-1994, initially allowing teams to choose their own number and lettering styles before introducing a homogenised typeface (a stylised, squished version of Optima Black, font fans) for the 1997-1998 season that was used for ten years.

The Football League was, for many years resistant to the idea of squad numbers and player names on the shirts, implying that players would become egotistical should they suddenly have their surnames displayed on their backs.

They had a volte face change of heart in 1999 though, and cited one of the reasons as an attempt to create ‘local heroes’. Hmm.

The typeface, design ed by Sportin g i-D (formerly Chris Kay International, suppliers of garment appliques to FIFA, UEFA, the FA, adidas, Nike and, ahem, the SPL) was a bold, clean and easy to read font, certainly compared to the deformed looking Premier League letters and numbers. At the base of each number was the Football League’s logo.

White letters and numbers were used on both the home and away shirts and the home shorts had smaller white numbers on the left side above the manufacturer’s mark, though the corresponding numbers on the white away shorts were red, to match the sponsors patch and trim of the purple and white strip.

Because both home and away shirts featured raglan sleeves, the letters making up player surnames were usually applied radially arched on both kits, though mid-season signing Ian Goodison’s away shirt had horizontally placed letters that, because of surname length, began underneath the arms, midway down the shirt. Misapplied lettering aside, the Avec kits provided an aesthetic return to form for City after the previous years gradiating orange/white home shirt shocker, and the mark II Hinchliffe crest (not Avec’s doing) was the only blemish on an otherwise lovely uniform set.

Les Motherby