Kits and misses: Sunderland's best and worst ever shirts!
07/01/2024 01:00 AM
Following the release of our eye-catching new Hummel threads, Milo Challis takes a look at some of our best and worst efforts from over the years
Few will disagree with me when I say that Hummel have given us a stunner of a new home shirt. It is superb, and the perfect callback to kits from better days.
With a brand spanking new shop to sell it in, and a cameo by the club's bigwigs and newcomer Regis Le Bris, the kit launch seems to have helped fans get a little more excited.
The kit, and the hype that came with it, got me thinking of Black Cats kits of the past. Some brilliant, and some not so much. It got me thinking about the best and the worst ideas to have escaped the design room, and I've compiled what I feel is a pretty comprehensive list, ranging from the good, the bad, to the most awful of Sunderland football shirts to even exist.
The Bad...
1981/82 Home Shirt
This shirt has a sort of odd pull to it. It is ugly but it's fascinating in its own right. An experiment gone wrong.
I think it should be hated not for the design, but for the decision to stray from the original Sunderland design. Our red and white kit is a thing of beauty, the stripes are us. It most certainly 'ain't broke' so why fix it?
Le Coq Sportif tried too much here. Anything other than the home shirt and the design may have succeeded, but you just don't reinvent the stripes like that.
2017/18 Away Shirt
Getting worse, we have the 2017/18 season away kit. Sunderland have had a pretty decent number of sky blue shirts, some appearing in this list. But this was not one of them.
A glance on the internet will quickly show you that these shirts are still available to buy new and seemingly in bulk. This is no real surprise; one need only watch 'Sunderland 'til I Die' to be reminded of the many awful performances in that shirt.
The shirt itself is really boring, void of any real design and it's… it's just blue. And the context of the season? Well, that places it firmly in the 'Bad' column.
2023/24 Third Shirt
I'll start with the bad, and there are many to pick from. The first of which is this season's third shirt, or the so-called 'Limited Edition Shirt'.
I will caveat this claim by saying that I don't hate this shirt and by no means is it the worst. It just is a bit of a nothing shirt. There's no real design to it, it was just luminescent lime green and that, to me made it boring.
Until we recently struck the new deal with Hummel, we were victims of the Nike kit system, by which they use blanket designs for the myriad of clubs locked into sponsorship deals with them. This kit feels no different, it's just a bit of a template really. Nowt to look at, but on the other hand, it isn't particularly offensive on the eye either.
The Downright Ugly...
2017/2018 Home Shirt
Looking like a stick of rock and getting relegated whilst doing so, what a terrible way to go. This is one of the worst Sunderland kits to grace recent memory. It was just rubbish.
The kit had a lot of problems. There was quickly an epidemic of 'Dafabet' logos peeling off jerseys, whilst the shirt also symbolised major issues on the pitch too as the club was relegated for the second season in a row. The players on the pitch peeled just as easily as the sponsors on the shirts.
However, for all the horrible memories that surround the kit, it does hold a special place in my memory for one reason. Many fans like me will have this shirt embroidered with the 'For Bradley' badge on the chest. I can't quite hate the shirt for this very reason, it's an important part of our recent history and a timely reminder of a brave little boy who loved the club. It makes a bad shirt just a little better.
1995/1997 Away Shirt
A yellow shirt with blueish/green stripes at the top was an audacious choice, and it didn't pay off.
It was something of an abomination, the yellow and the weird blue stripes clashed enough. But worse, on top of this was red printing depicting player names and numbers. This made the shirt look like baby's first introduction to the primary colours.
Most disappointing about the shirt is that I know it is something that I would have had a morbid attraction to and almost certainly bought at the time. Many of the Avec kits were pretty great, but "I know bangers, and this is not a banger." This kit turned out a hot mess of multiple colours that should frankly never be mixed again.
2016/17 Third Shirt
This season probably started a chain of terrible years in terms of Sunderland kit designs, and some of the worst shirts I can remember stem from this year and the ones that followed.
The purple shirt was woeful, a particularly bad design. This probably explains why I don't think I have EVER seen a Mackem wear one to a game. It was a bad kit, and it seems to be universally recognised as such.
The Good...
1994/96 Home Shirt
This was a great shirt, genuinely superb. The design is a great reimagination of a basic design, but not too far from what makes a Sunderland shirt iconic. Unlike Le Coq Sportif's failed experiment in 1981, Avec made subtle changes and reinvigorated an age-old design.
The shirt has lots to celebrate, the classic badge is loved by so many whilst the Vaux sponsor tugs on the heartstrings. Not to mention that Peter Reid led the team to the First Division title in the 1995/96 season.
I find it odd that this kit has never been recreated, be it as a redesigned playing shirt or as a throwback strip for the fans. In my opinion, it needs to be brought back as soon as possible.
2015/16 Away Shirt
Not a universally loved shirt admittedly but hear me out. The kit is nothing special design wise, in fact it's pretty uninspiring. But the memories the kit holds are impeccable.
Jermaine Defoe ripped it up in this shirt, scoring a screamer against the Mags who were also involved in a bitter relegation battle.
The season itself was a pretty poor one, and the club only just survived. But we did survive, and at the expense of our bitter rivals from north of the Tyne. The shirt holds special memories for a fair few Mackems and I still see a few wear it on match day now.
2007/08 Third Shirt
Putting the 2016/17 third shirt to shame, this is how to make a blue kit. The shirt was a nice callback to the 1978 shirt with a bit of a modern twist.
The season saw the introduction of Kenwyne Jones, and it saw Roy Keane's first season in the Premier League. The season was a tough one and saw the club finish 15th, but the kit was a good one.
The results may have be few and far between, but the vibes were there.
