Take One Kit

Sunderland home 1981-83

Le Coq Sportif, you naughty, naughty people! Having received the contract to supply new kit for Sunderland back in 1981, and what do you do? You totally pull the rug from under the feet of those ardent Black Cats supporters by changing the home kit beyond recognition. The sheer nerve!

Yes, this was the period in British football history when Le Coq Sportif upset thousands of Mackems by replacing those iconic red and white stripes with... candy stripes. Even the term ‘candy stripes’ reeks of unconvincing weakness, and that’s before you’ve even clapped eyes on the football kit Sunderland were given.

I have to be honest, though: as a ten-year old I thought this was a neat-looking kit and had no grasp of tradition and how much it meant to a great many people. In its own right this looked like a kit that couldn’t possibly have been designed in the 1970’s, and the fact that it turned its back on the traditional red and white stripes was fine by me.

But now I’m older and wiser (and looking for easy web content, more pertinently). I now realise the hurt that would have been caused by the French sportswear manufacturer and wonder if the pain could have been styled out better all those years ago.

To that end, I’ve created five ‘what if’ kits that hopefully show some alternatives to that infamous Sunderland ensemble. The remit is to somehow retain the candy stripes in some capacity but to make the kit look a bit more ‘Sunderland.’ Here goes...

A: Wider candy stripes

A bit thin, those stripes, aren’t they? A bit insubstantial. Hardly there. Let’s make them wider and a bit closer in presence to the red stripes worn by Pop Robson or Bobby Kerr. (Sorry - showing my age there.)

These reworked candy stripes definitely look better and the starkness of the white is reduced, but (a) I'm not sure you can’t really call them candy stripes when they’re that thick, and (b) Sunderland fans still wouldn’t have been placated - even with the shorts changed to black, as they should be. Verdict: C+.

B: More candy stripes

It’s a given that Le Coq Sportif’s second major faux pas was to colour the shorts red, so I’ve changed that to black on all my offerings (thereby ensuring I can claim I’ve done something right).

But those stripes... what to do? Perhaps use more of them? This design doubles the number of candy stripes on the shirt in the hope of increasing the amount of red, but it doesn’t really work. It reminds me a bit of Sheffield Wednesday’s 1987-89 home shirt, and I didn’t like that one much either. Verdict: D.

C: Candy stripes and solid stripes

If you can’t give the fans what they want but you want to enforce your own ideas, at least meet them half-way. That’s the advice I’d have given Le Coq Sportif if I’d been old enough to do so back in 1981. As it is, I was probably busy wondering whether I preferred KP’s cheese and onion crisps or Golden Wonder’s back in the day, so I was of no use. Belatedly, I can now offer a solution.

This design alternates traditional solid red stripes with stripes made up of candy stripes (if that’s not too confusing to comprehend). Personally, I quite like it as a compromise of sorts. It also reminds me of Sheffield United’s home shirt that was worn between 1979 and 1981. I actually like my design better, actually, so yah boo sucks if you disagree. Verdict: B.

D: Candy stripes inside solid stripes

For this design, I’ve started with Sunderland’s solid red stripes and reversed three candy stripes against the centre of each one. It’s a bit of a cheat because the candy stripes are effectively white rather than red (as on the original design), but it works pretty well all the same.

As with the last kit, this one has distant echoes of other kits worn around the time, specifically in this case the Southampton home shirt (1976-80). It’s not quite the same, but it combines red stripes of different widths to pleasing effect. Verdict: B+.

E: Diagonal candy stripes as ‘solid’ stripes

Finally, at the wacky end of the spectrum, a design that would have sorely tested Sunderland fans perhaps more than the kit their team actually got. In a last desperate attempt to re-purpose those candy stripes, I’ve given them a 45-degree twist and repeated them as individual de facto stripes in their own right.

The overall effect is a strange one in that the stripes don’t look solid but they don’t look slight or insignificant either. Quite whether Le Coq Sportif would have gone to the trouble of putting a design like this into production is anyone’s guess, but it’s unlikely this would have appealed to many people - let alone the Mackem purists. Verdict: D-.

So there are my five alternatives, but which one do you like best? Just for fun, I invite you to vote for your favourite design below! It's not a competition - just a way of gauging your thoughts and design sensibilities. Also, if you want to be more detailed in your feedback, please drop me a line via the Kitbliss pages on Twitter or Facebook or via the Contact page on this website. Thank you!