Leicester Home Kit 0-0 Leicester Away Kit
The whole point of a football club having an away kit is that the away kit is a different colour to the home kit, and thus can be worn when there is a clash with the opposition.
Say for example a team wears blue and white stripes as their home kit. Then they’d choose to wear green away from home. Or yellow. Or black. Or volt. Or red. Or red and black stripes. You get the picture – anything but blue, essentially.
That is, unless you are the Albion. Chairman Dick Knight used to take a famous hands-on role when it came to designing the Albion’s kits and in 2008-09 he took the decision to have a blue and white home shirt, a yellow and blue away shirt and a sky blue third shirt.
This begged a question that surely somebody with a little bit of common sense should have raised at the design stage – what happens if we play somebody in blue? Actually, there was no ‘if’ about it – 11 of League One’s other 23 teams wore blue. At some point in the season, we were going to have a problem.
Remarkably, it took until December and the Johnstone’s Paint Point Southern Section semi final away at Shrewsbury Town for an issue to arise. With Sky Sports in attendance, the television bigwigs were concerned that having two clubs playing in blue might cause some issues for their viewers and so the Albion convened a hastily-designed white kit for the occasion.
The pre-warning from Sky had allowed Brighton to avoid the potential embarrassment of having to borrow a kit from the Shrews that night at the Prostar Stadium. Six weeks later and with no television cameras in attendance at the Walkers Stadium for Brighton’s clash with League One leaders Leicester City, the potential embarrassment became real embarrassment.
The Albion had intended to wear their yellow and blue away kit before referee Craig Pawson unsurprisingly said it was too much of a clash with Leicester’s all blue. With the white number deemed a “one off” kit at this point, the only other options available for Brighton to wear were blue and white. Or blue. See the problem?
As a result, Micky Adams’ side took to the field to take on the division’s outstanding team in Leicester Reserves’ yellow away shirts. That proved particularly confusing for the 428 away fans who arrived in dribs and drabs throughout the game. A horrific crash on the M1 had shut the motorway for a large part of the afternoon, which meant Seagulls supporters turning up sporadically with a number of cars not arriving until as late as the 70th minute.
It must have been quite the moment to enter the stadium with just 20 minutes remaining, only to be greeted by the sight of every player wearing Leicester shirts. A good night though for City sponsor Topps Tiles who received double the exposure with their name and logo on 21 of the 22 shirts on display – only Albion goalkeeper John Sullivan was sporting his own green Brighton jersey.
Players place plenty of store on kit colours and familiarity – we’ve seen Brighton’s 2018-19 green away kit discarded after just five outings because the players dislike it – and so struggling Albion looked like they had a ready made excuse if the heavy defeat many of us were expecting against the Foxes transpired.
What actually happened was the complete opposite as the Albion delivered one of their best performances of the season, despite playing in Leicester yellow. City would end up winning the title with 96 points come the end of the campaign, seven clear of Peterborough United in second, yet they could find no way past Sullivan and his back four as Brighton claimed a most unlikely point in a 0-0 draw.
The visitors were on the back foot for most of the game but managed to restrict Leicester to mainly long range efforts. The closest the Foxes came was when an Andy King shot took a wicked deflection off Tommy Elphick with Sullivan getting the faintest of fingers onto the ball to push it onto the bar. The rebound then fell to Matty Fryatt who was just a matter of yards out but Sullivan showed brilliant reactions to save the division’s top scorer’s header from near point-blank range.
Brighton did offer a little more going forward in the second half as the away crowd began to swell with the motorway finally open again. Chris Birchall had a long range effort palmed away by David Martin, Tommy Elphick’s header from a Dean Cox corner was deflected behind and Jason Jarrett went close to a debut goal. Jarrett had an encouraging first outing in a Brighton Leicester away shirt before doing nothing for the remainder of his brief Brighton career, adding his name to the long list of shit that Micky Adams signed in his second spell at the club.
Leicester’s best chance of the second 45 came when King’s 30 yarder skimmed Sullivan’s post, but to lose would have been harsh on a brilliant rearguard showing from the Albion. Hopes were high that taking a point from the league leaders would be the catalyst for Brighton to climb away from the League One relegation zone and there was a 2-1 victory over Hartlepool at Withdean four days later.
But that proved to be the final points that Adams ever won as Brighton boss. Home defeats against Peterborough and Carlisle followed as well as elimination from the Paint Pot at the hands of a Luton Town side bottom of the entire Football League – and Adams was gone.
Given this showing at the Walkers, perhaps we should have played in Leicester’s away kit every week?
Leicester City: David Martin, Michael Morrison, Bruno Berner, Jack Hobbs, Kerrea Gilbert, Tom Cleverly, Matt Oakley, Andy King, Lloyd Dyer, Matty Fryatt, Paul Dickov.
Subs: Joe Mattock (Berner 52), Barry Hayles (Dickov 73), Max Gradel, Ashley Chambers, Carl Pentney (unused).
Albion: John Sullivan, Andy Whing, Adam Hinshelwood, Adam El-Abd, Tommy Elphick, Jason Jarrett, Chris Birchall, Dean Cox, Tommy Fraser, David Livermore, Nicky Forster.
Subs: Doug Loft (Cox 87), Colin Hawkins, Kevin McLeod, Stuart Fleetwood, Michel Kuipers (unused).
Attendance: 17,410
