It's that time of the week again. Time for a look at a best-forgotten monstrosity. I most say that I am a bit surprised at this week's entry. It comes from Edinburgh's Hibernian. Like Arsenal, Hibernian usually have a set look for their shirts. In Hibs' case, it means a green body with white sleeves. Unfortunately for them, they are also like Arsenal in that they occasionally go off the rails with their change strips. This shirt, from the seasons 1994-96, is one of those times.
First of all, let's go with the color choice. Your club's main color is green. You choose a change shirt with green and purple stripes. How does this make sense? Celtic do the same thing, sometimes having green and black stripes, instead of green and white hoops. It drives me batty, especially when these two play each other. Also, green and purple? Are you auditioning shirts for the Wimbledon Championships? Let's try a better combo.
Of course, as is usual, some of the blame lays squarely on the manufacturer. In this case it is Mitre. They sure do love those chevrons, don't they? They are all over the collar and the sleeves. And, if you check below, even in the sublimation. Yuck. And those buttons. Three rubber buttons that force the player to ask themselves to George Costanza question of how many to open. If only this were a Greek team, then no question would be necessary--all of them would be open.
Also, Mitre, what is the sublimated text that you can kind of make out in this picture?
"Hibees" is my guess, but why add it at all? What was the big fascination of doing this in the first place? My guess is that it was there, by all manufacturers, simply because they could. It's kind of like a infant's fascination with his genitalia. Once they find it, all of the sudden they can focus on nothing else. (your welcome)
Of course, I would be remiss if I did not let you know this beauty is for sale. Hit up the E-bays to find it. Truthfully, if one is a Hibs fan, this is a shirt from a pretty good era for the team. A third place finish and a semifinal run in the cup in '94-'95. What you lot (or my lot) wouldn't give for that now, huh?
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
The Good, The Bad, The WTF
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5 comments:
That crest is minging, but I think this was the time period where Hibs tried to bury their "Irish" past and maybe that is why they have that crest, plus it was the fucking 80's...
As I am relatively new to your blog, I might have missed you already doing a feature on this but, you would have decades worth of material for this topic if you look at 80-90s Celtic away kits. The Bumble Bee and others...truly a testament to 80/90s football kits and the nightmare fuel that they brought!
I think it may have been the 96-97 season where my beloved Celtic had an absolute honker of a change strip.
Black and varying shades of illuminous yellow. In a sort of splodged stripe effect. Not pretty in any way shape of form.
Our next change strip fared not much better, in my view. Black with thin bands of illuminous green and either side of the thin bands were the top and bottom halves of the crest. Off-set so that they didnt match up. I believe we lost the first game we played in that strip(away to Aberdeen, perhaps?) mainly through embarrassment to be seen wearing it.
Its also the strip that Larsson was wearing when he broke his leg against Lyon. Presumably a ploy so he could avoid wearing it the rest of the season.
Celtic 1
Celtic 2
Celtic shirts we've already done. Try not to be too put off by the anti-Celtic talk in these. Your author is an Aberdeen fan.
Ah, Pittodrie. The only stadium in Scottish football where there is a sheep pen out the back known as the Wives Enclosure.
I jest, of course.
But Celtic have had some shockers. Arsenal had a blue one a few years back(JVC sponsored, I think maybe the season before the Dreamcast sponsorhip) which had a few nasty looking zig-zags on it. That was somewhat atrocious.
It'd be near impossible to trace, but my old school had some mind-blowingly ugly shirts too.
We had a QPR-esque blue and white hoops for our home kit, which wasnt terrible. Then for our away games, we had a dreadful Harlequin looking thing, and for when we werent quite embarrassed enough, we had a poo-brown and yellow affair.
Ah the memories come flooding back from whence they were repressed.
The one with the brown was the kit I was thinking of, but couldn't remember the year. I think it was during the 90s, as I once heard someone joke about the brown lines in the middle being a graph about Celtic's standing in the league that year...sad but true...and slightly funny.
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