16 May Your team’s colour

Whether it’s your home town, your family’s team or simply a team you enjoy watching play, you follow your respected football team through thick and thin, sunshine and rain, ups and downs, but have you ever wondered why their kit is the colour it is? Who decided on the colours you wear as your amour?

My team, Wolverhampton Wanderers, play in the distinctive Old Gold and Black and have done since 1892. In 1891, the Football League required each team to register distinctive colours which lead Wolves to choose Old Gold and Blue, later changing to black. Prior to that they had played in blue and white and then red and white stripes, both of which caused havoc for the laundry lady. There was also difficulty in distinguishing them from other teams’ strips at the time.

But surely there would have been some reason they chose such distinctive colours. Well, yes there was. Wolverhampton’s motto is “Out of Darkness Cometh Light” and so the association of Old Gold being the light and the black being the darkness was created. It makes sense once you realise. Not seen on many other teams at the time, they were strong and distinctive colours and remain so even now.

To me, gold signifies winners and champions, with gold medals being handed out to those in first place. A strong reputation to give a team as well as one for them to live up to. Sometimes referred to as orange, but soon corrected by those hard-fast Wolves fans as actually being Old Gold, fans are proud of their colours, their armour.

In researching my team’s colours I looked into the reasons for other teams’ colour choices. Liverpool play in red, and seem to be a team who don’t have many other colours in their back catalogue. This was because the manager of the time associated it with thepsychological impact it would have over the opponents – red for danger, red for power.For the same reason, you will notice a goalie’s kit is always a distinctly different colour from the rest of the team. A bright green, orange or even pink, to distract the one with already trembling, penalty-takers knees, and cause him to miss his target.

BirminghamCity chose royal blue over black to ensure their fans could see them on the pitch; the black was just too dark and hindered player identification.

Blackpool play in a bright tangerine colour, which after many trials of team shirt colours and designs in their past, came about after one of their directors watched the Dutch team play in the same colour. The distinguished colour was then adopted by Blackpool to aid them in their games, and give them a psychological advantage over their opponents.

If you have never thought about or looked into this topic before, but have wondered what place ‘colour’ has in our lives, I would highly recommend some investigation … you never know what you might find out.