This article isn’t actually about Burnley Football Club, so readers may question why it is here at all. However, the Editors (or one of them at least) has assured me that this magazine is big enough to make space for my rantings about the regrettable decline in the aesthetic appearance of football strips.
I’ve never been one for following football on a regular basis. This despite being brought up in a household where three of my four brothers were rabid Glasgow Rangers fans. Indeed, my Dad was heavily involved with said club’s supporters’ clubs at Hutchensontown and Ibrox, and was ticket convenor for both. Despite this familial involvement, however, I was never inspired (nor encouraged, being a girl) to attend matches.
Readers may gather from the last sentence of the previous paragraph that a somewhat chauvinistic ethos reigned in our house. I was surrounded by football in my formative years, but never actively participated in it, either by playing with or by supporting a team. If an Old Firm match was on, my Mum would pace the floor until all sons and father were home safe and sound. She would check the results at five o’clock as they came in on the television, hoping for a draw in the specious belief that this would result in less trouble after the game. This, apart from attending the annual Rangers Rally or the odd social night at the Supporters' Club, was the extent of the Neill women’s involvement with Rangers.
Nevertheless, the agonies of Saturday were not complete for us girlies until everyone had watched them replayed on a Sunday afternoon on ‘Scotsport’ – usually the game which had just been seen the previous day. As we only had one television, I adopted the ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ philosophy (not that there was much choice in the matter) and with blow-by-blow running commentary from my Dad, I relived Saturday’s game with my brothers.
One of the things that made this experience palatable was the pleasing fit of the strips at this period. I can remember attending a match against Airdrie at Ibrox. It was the end of the season and Rangers had won the treble. It was in the bag, the cups were lined up at the side of the pitch. Three older girls (I was eleven, they were about fifteen) were behind me screaming their heads off for Derek Parlane. They even had big badges with Derek’s face on pinned to their scarves. I wondered what all the fuss was about. Until I saw the players run onto the pitch and realised what a fetching figure Mr Parlane presented in blue and white. Every time Derek was passed the ball, the screams behind me reached Bay City Rollers proportions. Thus began my appreciation of 70s football strip styling.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that the shorts fit nicely around the crotch area that promotes this appreciation. I’m not that crass – I have standards, you know, although the shortness of the shorts is one of the reasons for my continued devotion to 70s styling. But it’s the overall effect I’m interested in.
Footballers (generally) have very pleasing physiques, notably so defenders. Seventies strips hugged their anatomies in all the right places. When I watch 70s footage of players (of any team) strolling tiredly from the bogs which passed for football pitches in those days, it never fails to move me to ‘mm-mm’ levels (the second ‘mm’ being higher in tone than the first).
My interest in all matters football has waned concomitantly with the growth in size of strips. In an age when women are actively encouraged to take an interest in football (with the installation of ladies' loos at grounds, female sports presenters and all that), designers of strips seem to be doing all that they can to ensure that this doesn’t happen. I realise that many female Clarets reading this will protest that their support does not depend on the size of the strips – but consider this, wouldn’t your devotion be enhanced if all those lovely Burnley lads were clothed in tight-fitting acrylic? It wouldn’t hurt.
My hopes were raised when, in the late nineties, men’s fashions saw the end of the ludicrously baggy look and embraced a return to seventies styling. River Island for men and Top Shop sported the new fashions in their window displays – the tight fitting seventies were back. Did this translate onto the football pitch? Hell no. Football has stuck resolutely to the circa 1992 style of sportswear. Shorts down to the knees flapping like sails in the wind. Surely this is a hindrance to performance? Apart from the aesthetics of the strip, it could be argued that a return to 70s styling is important to the aerodynamics of the sport. Moreover, 70s styles make even retina-shattering colours such as orange and yellow look good if sported properly, i.e. minimally.
Some will not be convinced, but that doesn’t really concern me – I’m not open to contrary argument on this matter. I do not wish to hear about the advantages of loose-fitting, breathable sportswear, but I would be pleased to hear from those who have a nostalgic yearning for 70s sportswear, and their reasons for this.
Mmm...the gorgeous Trevor Steven (the one on the left, in case you were wondering) shows a bit of leg.
Colin Waldron in the classic 1972-73 strip after winning promotion at Preston. See how aerodynamic shorts help performance?
