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SHEFFIELD WEDNESDAY AWAY 1993-95


I must start this article with a confession. While I support Rotherham United now, I was raised as a fan of Rotherham’s closest rivals, Sheffield Wednesday. “Closest” for Rotherham fans, anyway – Wednesday don’t give much of a damn about Rotherham, in my experience. It’s hardly in the same league as switching allegiance from Celtic to Rangers, I know, but I admit I still feel the faintest twinge of guilt over my fondness for Wednesday. No such fond wishes for Sheffield United, of course. I’m not a complete monster. Anyway, today I’m looking at a shirt from that Wednesday-supporting period of my youth, with Sheffield Wednesday’s 1993-95 away kit.


A very nice shirt it is too. Yellow and black is often a good combination, and the yellow pinstripes give the kit a nice balance, breaking up what would otherwise look an awful lot like a referee’s shirt. Actually, I believe Wednesday went with a black away kit in 1993 because the rules around Premier League referee’s shirts changed around that time – the officials switched from black to green, freeing up clubs to experiment with kits that exude a certain amount of menace. More menace than an all-yellow shirt would, at any rate.
I’d hesitate to use the word “classy” to describe this (or any other) football shirt, because I wouldn’t want to propagate the idea that it’s fine to turn up at your friend’s wedding reception in a replica football kit. It’s not appropriate attire, or so I’m told. There is something about this shirt that’s bit more elegant than many of the period, though. Perhaps it’s the connotations of wealth and success that are attached to pinstripes, or the colour scheme.


Or maybe it’s the fact that the shirt has KING printed on it a hundred times. No, it’s definitely not that. It’s on there to promote Puma’s ‘Puma King’ brand, but it still comes across as a bit vainglorious. Another way of looking at it is as a tribute to Wednesday’s then-defender Phil King, who did indeed play some matches wearing this very strip.


Then there’s the badge, and even if I hadn’t been raised as a Wednesdayite I’d still rank it as one of the best club crests ever to appear in English football. Designed, so the story goes, by a local art student and now sadly replaced by a more “traditional” heraldically-styled badge, the minimalist owl just works. It’s immediately recognisable, easily replicable by anyone bored curing a school lesson or business meeting, unique and stylish. I suspect many Wednesday fans are attached to this badge because the team were wearing it during their most successful modern period – playing Premier League football, winning the League Cup in 1991, reaching both cup finals in 1993 and the like. For me, it immediately reminds me of the footballers who were my heroes as a pre-teen, players like Chris Waddle, Des Walker and Kevin Pressman. It’s always the ones from your childhood that you remember best, and I’ve definitely got happy memories of wearing this shirt down the park, refusing to have it tucked in because that was how Chris Waddle wore his shirt. Sadly the only other thing I had in common with Chris Waddle was that I got injured a lot. I was a clumsy child.
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