For Football Laundry’s inaugural post, it seemed appropriate to look at a shirt from the team I actually support. That would be Rotherham United, my home-town club, a club almost entirely without glamour whose most famous celebrity fans are the Chuckle Brothers. Still, I feel like Rotherham United punch above their weight a lot of the time, with the upcoming season being another one spent in the Championship - Premier League, here we come. Anyway, let’s check out Rotherham’s 1993-94 away shirt, shall we?
Made by Matchwinner, this is perfect example of mid-nineties away kit design. While the home shirts were (mostly) kept fairly straightforward in deference to the traditions of the clubs and to avoid upsetting the fans, away shirts were fair game for experimentation. Yellow has been a pretty common colour for Rotherham’s away shirts over the years, and here it’s complemented - perhaps not the right word – by a swirling spray of black that could be intended to evoke tiger stripes, or possibly an oil spill. It’s bold and asymmetrical enough to be visually interesting without being so over-the-top that looking at it for too long causes vertigo or migraines, and as a bonus it doubles as safety wear if you’re cycling at night.
I like it a lot. I’m not a fan of the colour yellow generally, but yellow / orange and black football shirts? Sign me up. I know “yellow football shirt” is a phrase that naturally leads to thoughts of Brazil, but let's not overlook the likes of AEK Athens or Burton Albion.
The monochrome badge is nice, too. Bordering on classy? Maybe not, but there’s at least some elegance to its simplicity. The club name, the windmill to represent Rotherham's nickname of The Miller and the founding year of 1884, which is nonsense because Rotherham United were formed in 1925 and the 1884 thing was dreamed up as an excuse for a centenary to be held in 1984.
Thanks to a combination of my poor camera equipment and lack of photography skills, I did have trouble capturing just how yellow this kit is. Very yellow, that’s how. Not the “parking attendant’s coat” hi-vis yellow of some kits, but not far off. Imagine a beam of summer sunlight shining through the bottle of washing-up liquid on your kitchen windowsill and you’re about there.
This particular shirt is emblazoned with the name and number of journeyman forward Imre Varadi, a player who, like this kit, was slightly before my time. A couple of years after Varadi left the club I was attending every home match and most of the away games, travelling to such fascinating locales as Darlington and Carlisle. It’s a shame I never got to see this shirt in action, and the same can be said of Imre Varadi, who seems like an interesting sort. He must have loved South Yorkshire, given that he played for Rotherham as well their local “rivals” Sheffield Wednesday and Sheffield United. He was also sacked from Rotherham United after getting into a fist-fight with Archie Gemmill. Yes, the Gemmill who scored that goal at the 1978 World Cup. Funny how these things shake out.
There you go, then. A very yellow and black shirt that is perfectly of its time and could also come in handy if you’re every forced to hide from a deranged killer and the only concealed space available is a beehive. The blog’s off to a pretty good start, I’d say.
Imre Varadi! Inexplicably he played in the top division for a Leeds team that finished fourth, rotated with a number of other journeyman forwards throughout the season.
ReplyDeleteEnjoying this blog so far (and VGJunk which I've only recently discovered).