What Is Your Favourite Ever Saints Shirt ? Wednesday, 4th Nov 2015 09:33 These days football shirts are big business and there can't be many Saints supporters who don't own at least one, even if it has long since stopped fitting. But what is the fans favourite shirt of all time ? Over the past 40 years Saints have had some varying designs for their shirts, some fairly traditional and others far less so, but it will be the age factor that will probably drive people's choices, nostalgia is not what it used to be, but everyone remembers the kit Saints wore when they went to their first game and chances are they remember it fondly.
Up until the early 70's football shirts remained fairly constant for teams, they would wear the same kit for years, indeed sometimes judging by the faded colour, literally !
When Saints changed the collar design of their home shirt in 1973 it was the first fundamental change in well over a decade and even in that period collars would sometimes vary for no apparent reason. Saints promotion to the top flight in 1966 heralded a new era both on and off the pitch and the shirt had the traditional stripes with a rounded red collar, this would become an iconic Saints shirt and would serve the club till 1973, it was the shirt they wore when I saw my first game and therefore remains fond in my memory. In 1973 they introduced a collared shirt with a closed V neck and after 1975 this changed to an open V neck and had the addition of the club badge, this was the first time a badge had been on a Saints shirt since the Southampton St Mary's days and had never been on a traditional striped version.
1975/76 season would in fact become ground zero in terms of Saints shirts and designs and things would never be the same again after the club teamed up with Admiral for the 1976 FA Cup Final. The iconic yellow & blue kit worn that day with the groundbreaking admiral logo piped down the sleeves will always remain a firm favourite of those who were around at the time. The following season saw Admiral develop a new home kit with what would be known as the wallpaper kit and suddenly there were a plethora of kit manufacturers all placing their logo on the shirts and a myriad of designs. This new home kit would herald a period where Saints would not wear traditional stripes for another 13 years. After the wallpaper stripes came the Patrick kit which was more like an Ajax kit in reverse, some liked this kit probably because in the 5 years we wore it we enjoyed one of the best periods of the club's history, starting with Kevin Keegan and ending in 1985 when Lawrie McMenemy left the club, it was a golden period on the field, sadly we did not look like Saints though. There are some who remember this period fondly, but I am not one of them and when we went back to traditional stripes in 1989 after a well publicised Save Our Stripes campaign in the Ugly inside fanzine I for one was very pleased although we had now entered the period when clubs would change shirts every two years and the kits would come thick and fast. But although we would enjoy a period of relative stability, there was the occasional blip, between 1993-95 the kit that Pony produced for us was rather bizarre and had a sort of tick across the front.
Thankfully in 1995 they produced a more traditional kit with a nice button collar and personally this is one of my favourites. However things took a turn for the worse in 1999, the club decided to manufacture its own kit and the design although still basically stripes was not the best and looked more like a white shirt with a single red stripe.
After that we kept it real and the traditional stripes generally remained intact, sometimes broader, sometimes narrower, with just the collar changing till 2010 when we reverted to what has become known as "The Sash"
This was a replica of our first ever kit worn for the first four years of our existence and it proved popular in our 125th year and for fans of all ages is popular, I like it but I think it should be reserved for special occasions and perhaps should be repeated once every 10 years or thereabouts, keep it special and a rarity. We were now firmly in the new kit every year cycle, the Championship year kit of 2011/12 was good and another favourite of mine, but the next two kits were just not Saints kits.
For our return to the Premier League it would have been nice to have worn strips, but our then Chairman wanted to whitewash our history, so chose a kit that was identical to the one Liverpool had worn in the early 80's, the away kit as also not thought out very well as the white shirt clashed with just about everyone that we had to change and it was only worn in its entirety once, in many games the team had to wear the previous seasons away strip as both our home and away kits clashed to some degree with the opposition. But if we thought this on was bad the next probably would be in many supporters bottom 3 list, it was an off the shelf Adidas number, all red with a white flash on each sleeve, virtually every other team in the Premier seemed to have a variation on this design. Thankfully we are no back to stripes and this seasons kit is as good as we have ever had, but what is your favourite kit over the years and why ?
Give your choices and opinions below and then we will whittle that down to a top five contenders to vote on. Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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