Brighton & Hove Albion Best Ever Goalkeeper Shirt: The Nominations

Having crowned Brighton & Hove Albion’s Best Ever Home Shirt and Best Ever Away Shirt, there seemed to be only one logical place to go for our next tournament – Brighton’s Best Goalkeeper Shirt.

Before the mid 1980s, goalkeeper shirts were actually pretty boring. Brighton rarely strayed from kitting their number ones out in one colour with a Seagulls badge on. Hardly something to write home about.

That all changed though when manufacturers began to put more effort into what goalkeepers wore. The result has been some mind-boggling kits over the course of the last 35 years, with 16 nominated to do battle for the title of Brighton & Hove Albion’s Best Ever Goalkeeper Shirt.

As with our previous kit tournaments and our Brighton’s Worst Ever Performance competition, the 16 candidates will be split into four groups of four with the top two from each group progressing to the quarter finals.

Voting takes place on our Facebook and Twitter feeds with each shirt’s scores on the two platforms pooled together. The tournament will get underway on Monday 8th June and should take us right through until when the Premier League resumes.

Here are the candidates:

Adidas Green Shirt 1985-1987
Adidas were the first company to introduce something a little different from the standard goalkeeper’s kit, which makes this effort from the 1985-86 season a popular choice for nostalgic reasons. It was used in conjunction with the beautiful Phoenix Brewery shirts, the blue home version of which won the Best Home Shirt Tournament. A truly glorious era for fashionistas.

White Tiger Shirt 1990-1991
We don’t actually know much about this Brighton goalkeeper shirt, other than it was worn by the Mulletted Magician Tony Meola on his Albion debut against Wolverhampton Wanderers in September 1990. Meola was something of a flamboyant chap and so it seems very fitting he decided to dress as a white tiger when stepping out at the Goldstone for the first time. Perry Digweed was less enamoured with tiger print and once he returned to the side, Digweed stuck with plain green. That sadly means that this is an underused classic.

Sick Covered Shirt 1994-1997
Admiral made some wonderful home and away shirts during their three season association with Brighton and their goalkeeper efforts weren’t bad either. Sadly, Nicky Rust and Mark Ormerod would religiously wear boring green numbers unless a colour clash forced their hand, such as in games against Plymouth Argyle or when Carlisle United came to the Goldstone Ground in their fantastic away kit inspired by the livery of Eddie Stobart. On such occasions, Rust and Ormerod had no choice but to sport the beautiful yellow shirt which looked like it was covered in green sick. So rare is it that we could only find a suitable photo over on the brilliant Old Football Shirts website.

Centenary Dark Blue Shirt 2000-2002
Blue goalkeeper shirts are few and far between in Brighton history. Hardly a surprise, given that they could rarely be worn at home, what with Brighton wearing blue and everything. Errea found a way around this by using a darker, navy blue on the body of their centenary goalkeeper shirt along with lighter blue on the sleeves. As with everything the Italian kit company did, it looked insanely cool.

Centenary Yellow Shirt 2000-2002
When that lovely little blue number wasn’t worn, Michel Kuipers would instead reach for a yellow shirt with black patterning on the sleeve. This one got plenty of nominations, but we’re not convinced it is that good a kit over here at WAB Towers. There’s no doubt it was worn through some memorable times though, Kuipers delivering some of the most sensational goalkeeping performances many of us have ever seen as Brighton won back-to-back divisional titles at the start of the century.

Ostentatious Gold Shirt 2002-2004
“A gold goalkeeper shirt like Michel Kuipers, Andy Petterson, Ben Roberts, Dave Beasant and whoever else played in goal wore in the 2002-03 season as if they were some sort of goalkeeping god. It would have been ostentatious for Manchester United, let alone Brighton & Hove Albion.” Don’t think we need to add any more to that.

Tour De France Shirt 2004-2006
Italians are big on cycling and Errea decided to highlight that fact when they produced a replica of the Tour De France Yellow Jersey for the Albion’s goalkeepers to wear between 2004 and 2006. Given some of the cracking designs that Errea would come up with in future years, this is actually a pretty bland effort. There must be something about it though as it received more nominations than any other. Perhaps Brighton fans just really like cycling? Or everyone remembers Wayne Henderson wearing it for the 1-0 win at Selhurst Park in October 2005.

Palookaville Pink Shirt 2004-2005
Probably the most infamous goalkeeper kit in Brighton history. When David Yelldell took to the field for his Brighton debut away at Leeds United in January 2005, he was initially sporting the Tour De France Shirt. This caused a few issues in the first half, as the referee was also in yellow. To avoid any more confusion, Yelldell reappeared after the break wearing a previously unseen goalkeeper shirt – the Pink Palookaville Shirt. The Elland Road crowd is hardly the most enlightened and Yelldell was on the end of some relentless homophobic abuse from the Revie Stand. As a result, the Pink was never worn again – even through Yelldell was outstanding and Brighton picked up an impressive 1-1 draw. Dick Knight was quick to cash in of course, releasing a limited number for public sale.

Palookaville Green Shirt 2004-2005
The story of the Pink Shirt often means that the other Palookaville goalkeeper shirt gets overlooked – which is a shame, as for our money it is one of the best that Brighton have ever had. A lighter shade of green with white and black sleeves represented a very pleasing design. To make things even better, it was made from the skintight material that Errea used on the outfield Palookaville shirt, meaning that it clung to the body. Not great when it was being worn by Dave, a 45-year-old who weighs 20 stone and inexplicably thinks it is acceptable for him to wear a replica goalkeeper shirt. But on a Former Dutch Marine, phwoar.

Grey and Pink Shirt 2005-2006
Not many kit manufacturers could combine grey and pink and make it work. Errea of course managed it, and the result was this seriously underrated Brighton goalkeeper shirt from the 2005-06 season, which might just have an outside chance of being voted the Albion’s best ever. Just like with so many of these other candidates, it was seriously underused – but hopefully that won’t put off the voters.

White Gold Shirt 2006-2008
The golden period of Brighton goalkeeper shirts was between 2006-2008 and it therefore comes as little surprise to see three Errea kits from that two-year period nominated. The first of those is a frankly absurd design of white and gold shirt, gold shorts and white socks. The whole getup looked absolutely ridiculous and yet somehow, it worked. So let it never be said that white gold is suitable only for wedding rings – it can be used to dress Kuipers and Henderson too.

Maroon and Blue Shirt 2006-2008
Errea took a very real risk when combining red and blue in a goalkeeper shirt – it could quite easily have ended up looking a little too Crystal Palace. So good was this kit though that nobody seemed to realise what was going on with the colours. They were instead blown away by how good it looked. The gold arrows on the sleeve completed this extremely stylish number.

Dark Blue and Gold Shirt 2006-2008
The third and final goalkeeper kit from 2006-2008 to be nominated was the dark blue and gold number. It represented a throwback to the Centenary Dark Blue kit of six years earlier with the added addition of gold on the sleeves. Not much else to say, other than it just looked… cool.

Spider-Man Shirt 2010-2011
For Brighton’s brilliant 2010-11 League One title winning campaign, Errea made three goalkeepers kits inspired by your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man. There were green, yellow and red versions, all of which could have been worn by Peter Parker on the streets of New York as well as Casper Ankergren, Peter Brezovan, Michael Poke and Mitch Walker at Withdean Stadium. The red one was the most Spider-Man of the lot and that makes it the best. Ankergren didn’t agree though, wearing green in the majority of games with yellow as his backup choice. Hardly surprising given his love of Carlsberg and Marlboro Lights.

White Shirt 2011-2013
White is one of the most underutilised colours when it comes to Brighton goalkeeper kits. There was a white Palookaville Shirt produced but it was only used on a couple of occasions and the glorious White Gold of 2006 before this little number popped up for the first season at the Amex. The colour looks like it should be worn with a tie, but the design itself is pretty nice, featuring black and green around the chest. Ankergren and Brezovan didn’t wear it much, but Colombian goalkeeper David Gonzalez seemingly loved it, keeping his only Albion clean sheet while wearing it away at Barnsley on the final day of the 2011-12 season.

Sky Blue Nike Shirt 2017-2019
Nike may have been making Brighton kits for six seasons now, but they only had one shirt nominated in our Best Ever Goalkeeper Shirt tournament. That is hardly a surprise, given that every goalkeeper kit they have supplied the Albion with has also been used by England, Manchester City, Atletico Madrid, Harltepool United, Dog & Duck XI and anyone else who has bought a Nike template kit off the internet. There is one exception – the sky blue kit worn away from home in the Albion’s debut Premier League campaign. It was smart, simple and had the added bonus of being worn by Maty Ryan, who – let us be honest – would look fantastic in a bin bag.

Keep an eye on both our We Are Brighton Facebook page and our We Are Brighton Twitter feed to cast your votes for Brighton & Hove Albion’s Best Ever Goalkeeper Kit.

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