If In Doubt, Write A Different List

I thought I'd break the monotony of the players list with another list this evening. The Guardian's Sports Blog decided to break up what has been a rather flat sort of a week, football-wise, by listing their favourite six football kits of all time. Rather than risk the wrath of some of the goons that post on there and put it up over there, I thought I'd post mine up on here. Feel free to mock my utter lack of fashion sense.

6. Enfield - 1982 FA Trophy Final (no picture available - at least, I couldn't find one on the internet): May 1982 was a particularly good week to live in my little corner of North London. On the first Saturday, Enfield beat Altrincham 1-0 in the FA Trophy Final, and a week and a half later (on account of the replay) Spurs beat QPR in the FA Cup Final. Enfield wore a special kit for this match, made by Le Coq Sportif and a bit like the Spurs home kit of the time, only a lighter blue (Enfield wore white and royal blue rather than white and navy), and with thin horizontal pin-stripes. Most significantly, it had their badge on it. They'd clearly arrived in the big time. They only wore it for the one match, and went back to their normal kit for the start of the next season.

5. Coventry City - 1982-1984: I'm sure that this was one of Jimmy Hill's "brilliant" ideas. Incorporate the Talbot Cars logo into the shirts. This had the effect of making TV companies very funny about turning up with the cameras at Highfield Road, and they ended up having to have another kit which was used solely when they were on the television (which still had a "T" design on it, but was marginally more subtle).

4. Crystal Palace (1979-1983): Palace had two versions of this kit - the first made by Admiral and the second was made by Adidas. The white with a red and blue diagonal sash was pretty exotic at the time, I think, which kind of matched their "Team Of The 80s" hype. The kit lasted about two years longer than the nickname did.

3. Southampton Away (1982-1984): Another black and white one, I'm afraid (though there's a colour one here . I just think that the design of those Southampton shirts (home and away - the home one was, of course, red & white) was really quite stylish. Nothing too profound there.

2. Nantes (1983-1985): I spent quite a few of my childhood summers in France, and grew up thinking that French football was great. I still do, as it goes. Nantes had consistently great shirts between about 1977 and 1986, but this one was the first French football shirt that I bought, so it gets a place in my top six. I was so taken aback my those massive sponsors' logos (and I'm still not completely sure what it is what "Europe 1" actually do or did) that they might as well have had "HELLO IAN - WE'RE WATCHING YOU" printed on them.

1. Spurs (1980-1982): This has to be the high watermark of football kit design, doesn't it? It's brilliant. It also happens to be the first football kit that my parents bought me. I've still got the shirt, somewhere (it doesn't fit any more). The yellow away kit (as seen in the 1982 FA Cup Final against QPR) was pretty nifty, too.