A Christmas Gift Shop
Keen followers of this column, both of you, will remember me telling you about the Crystal Palace Museum, found on the site of the original ground ‘The Nest’.
http://theeaglesbeak.com/index.php/palace-in-perspective-4/
The Museum Shop is rather hard to find but is the ideal spot for a late Christmas present purchases. However, the shop does not sell a wide range of goods. There are no Palace bibs, no garden gnomes and definitely no onesies. In fact, all the shop has is home kits through the ages.
It’s up to you choose your favourite, and I’d like to run you through what is available.
For the first forty years of our history, we wore claret and blue, in similar fashion to Villa, Burnley and West Ham. After that we alternated between white shirts and claret and blue. Faffing about with our kit is clearly part of history not a modern phenomenon
Back in the sixties, the kit was white with a rather fetching claret and blue stripe, not perhaps shown at its best in the black and white picture below, but the picture is of the great Johnny Byrne, an England player from the lower leagues, a fine achievement though not the last from a Palace player.
The club turned back to claret and blue but introduced the vertical stripe in the late 60’s. The team that won promotion to the old First Division wore that distinctive claret shirt with the thin blue stripes, which meant we didn’t look like Villa, Burnley and West Ham anymore, and we celebrated promotion by introducing the yellow collar, modelled here by Steve Kember:
Next came my first kit, a marriage of white, claret and the vertical stripe, one that I always call the Don Rogers kit and everyone nods in agreement (perhaps out of politeness or sympathy, I have no idea), because it is the one he wore for that game in 1972, forty-one years ago this week in fact:
The red and blue kit didn’t arrive until 1973/74, when Malcolm Allison decided to respond to relegation by changing the kit, changing the nickname and selling half the team to Orient. The end result was further relegation, but a kit we still have to this day.
For devotees of Subbuteo, the kit performed a dual purpose. The little sticker on the end of the team box told us that the kit was born not only by Palace but also Barcelona. So you could play Leeds-Palace one minute and Barcelona-Real Madrid the next. The golden player was clearly the one that doubled up as Peter Taylor and Johan Cruyff.
Personally I’m a big fan of the badge in the centre of the chest and the number on the arm, and most of all a proper even stripe, none of this halves nonsense.
Malcolm Allison was considered ahead of his time, and once again he was out in front, electing for the team to wear a lucky kit as Palace continued their unlikely FA Cup run of 1976, winning at Leeds, Sunderland & Chelsea before losing in the semi-final to Southampton. The lucky kit was of course the white shirt with the red and blue sash, modelled beautifully by our left-footed winger, Peter Taylor, another Palace player to play for England from the lower league.
Here’s a clip from the cup run, doubling up as advice for Stewart Downing – Stewart this is how you cut in from the right and score left-footed.
The white sash kit stayed lucky for the club through the FA Youth Cup-winning years of 1977 and 1978, and for the promotions of 1977 and 1979.
The kit got shinier as polyester and perms dominated the early 1980’s, but no-one really noticed because we were no good.
Our 1980’s revival started with our unlucky kit of the 1970’s, the red and blue stripes, and it also saw our first shirt sponsors – now who remembers ‘Red Rose’, ‘Top Score’, ‘AVR’ or ‘Andrew Copeland solicitors’ emblazoned on our chests?
As the eighties progressed the sponsors were more recognisable and the team began to improve. The Thomas, Wright and Bright side’s greatest achievement was the first 110 minutes of the 1990 FA Cup Final. Warning: do not watch after 6:40. Just imagine the referee had blown the whistle halfway through extra time instead:
The kit for the FA Cup Final replay is the single reason for the Home Kit only policy at the shop. I’m sure you understand.
Thereafter our kit has changed only in the width of the stripe, the sponsor’s logo and the colour of the shorts. The year of the white shorts coincided with the brief but wonderful Palace career of Lombardo. A bonkers time, but what a player, here laying two goals on a plate in a rare win over Derby
There was a fleeting return to the white sash a few years back, but the red and blue remains the favoured kit, topped off currently with the return of the lucky yellow collar.
Now that we’ve seen the kits I’ll tell you my choice – either the Don Rogers kit or the original Malcolm Allison number on the arm Barcelona kit.
If only I could find where the shop is …
This article would have been impossible without the following website. It’s brilliant!
http://www.historicalkits.co.uk/Crystal_Palace/Crystal_Palace.htm
Article written by Neil Carter
