This is a little experiment in designing
football guernseys, something which I have wanted to do for a long time but
have only recently taught myself how to do properly. Armed with Microsoft Paint and some blank
templates downloaded from the Bigfooty guernsey design board, I set about
creating an Aussie rules guernsey for each of the ten A-League teams (based on
the strips shown here).
The rules I set for myself were that each guernsey must use the colours of the
relevant A-League team (with one exception: see Melbourne City below), and the
design must have been worn in the AFL, VFL, VFA, SANFL, WAFL, or interstate
matches.
For Adelaide United, I have avoided the
obvious idea of using the Adelaide Crows or South Australian state guernseys
(although I have used the Crows’ colours), and have instead made use of the
similarity between United’s colours and those of Fitzroy. The guernsey is that
of Fitzroy’s post-colour TV one, with navy replacing Oxford blue, and the FFC
monogram replaced by the AFC monogram used in a mid-2000s Crows’ heritage round
guernsey.
The Brisbane Roar guernsey presented a
problem: the GWS Giants are the only AFL team ever to wear orange, but their
design, in particular the large letter ‘G’, is not really relevant to Brisbane.
So I took the Roar’s orange and white and combined it with the original
Brisbane Bears guernsey – you know, the one with the stylised map of Queensland
with the little koala’s head in south-eastern corner.
The Central Coast Mariners play in West
Coast’s colours and have a nautically-themed nickname, so I used the old
Fremantle Dockers anchor with the Eagles’ navy blue and yellow.
Melbourne City’s guernsey keeps the predominantly
white look of their strip while paying homage to the classic Footscray guernsey
of the E. J. Whitten era. This is also the only guernsey where I have altered a
team’s colour scheme; white, sky blue, and black is a colour scheme alien to
the national code, so I took the liberty of changing the sky blue to the
original Port Power teal.
The Melbourne Victory have gone with the
navy blue with white yoke look worn by Sunshine in the VFA; the Victorian state
guernsey would have been too easy.
The Newcastle Jets one was also easy – just
take Port Melbourne’s red and blue stripes and add a beige trim and numbers.
(Another possibility I considered was using the Western Bulldogs’ current
guernsey but changing the white band to beige.)
The Perth Glory presented another challenge.
Their colours are very unique – dark purple and light purple separated by white
pinstripes – and I was trying to avoid the obvious inclination to model the
guernsey on something worn by their fellow sandgroping purple-wearers, the Dockers.
I came up with a sash design based on those worn by the Western Australian
state team in the late 1970s and early 1980s, complete with stylised map of the
State of Excitement.
Sydney FC’s guernsey was also too easy.
Sturt have always worn sky blue with a navy blue SFC monogram, so I didn’t even
have to change the letters. And then I had second thoughts, and decided that
the Sydney Swans’ Opera House yoke would look good in the two blues.
As for the Wellington Phoenix, I could have
gone with Sandringham-style yellow and black stripes, or a ‘reverse Richmond’
yellow with black sash look, but since St. Kilda have been playing a few home
matches in the Windy City in recent times, decided to go with something
Saints-inspired: a yellow-black-yellow panel guernsey with black back.
For the Western Sydney Wanderers, it was
just a matter of flipping the hoops around to make them stripes. Red and black
stripes have been worn in the past by Waverley in the VFA and West Adelaide in
the SANFL. Since the Wanderers use the old-school thin hoops, I went for some
old-school thin stripes.
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