Nice tribute to Cluxton. Fair play to the kerry lads.
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Missing those 3 stripes over the shoulder though. That’s what makes it am afraid.
Oh my lord. 
That’s incredible. I hate Kerry GAA but fucking hell that’s some kit
What a jersey this was. I had no idea what Kersten or Kersten Hunik was, I later found out it was a Dutch haulage company, but whatever it was, it seemed exotic and cool and swaggery. This Down team also turned the Puma King mouldy into a fashion icon.
It’s no wonder Donegal were smashed in this match. When you turn up in that, against this, well, goodnight Killybegs.
I was perched up in the corner of the Canal End over the tunnel for the 1992 All-Ireland final, my first. I was expecting Donegal to be wearing their Kerry style colours, having had to change for the semi-final against Mayo. Instead I saw them running out in this Down style template. Magee are still living off this. All was changed, changed utterly.
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That Kersten shirt changed the game entirely. You obviously remember Meath’s dreadful O Reilly Transport aborted attempt at that template, short lived in the 4 game saga. in 1991. It wasn’t right. Meath should always be fully green
But that Magee tailored Donegal shirt was fucking sublime. It should be barely tweaked. Its like Offaly getting it right in 94 and keeping it for the best part of a decade.
The different colour sleeves craic came in for 1991. With some counties it worked, with others it was a disaster. My general rule of thumb is that it tended to work better where the sleeves were a darker colour than the rest of the jersey (Down, Dublin, Roscommon, Donegal 1992), and didn’t work where the sleeve was a lighter colour than the rest of the jersey (Meath 1991, Donegal 1991, Armagh 1992 on).
Like, you couldn’t imagine a Cork or Galway jersey with white sleeves.
Then you had other counties who had hoops or stripes and tried it (Clare, Derry, Wexford, Kilkenny). Derry and Wexford just about got away it because they won All-Irelands with different coloured sleeves, but overall, different coloured sleeves with a hoop or stripes or halves is too fussy. Kilkenny have had non-striped sleeves it for the last 25 years. They’ve won 24 senior hurling All-Irelands in that time, but not one of those jerseys will ever be loved.
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The truest thing ever written on this forum.
I’d agree re the lighter sleeves to an extent, but I really liked this jersey nonetheless.
And I’ll always love this one
The man, the legend.
I don’t know how Offaly managed to pull off that 1994 kit. I really don’t. It had all the ingredients for a turkey, but somehow it wasn’t.
The Armagh one above is hilarious. They changed the chevrons or whatever you call them for the 1994 League final. An Amiga Paint five minute job. I also hate that jersey because I associate it with the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix.
The 1999 jersey worked better, I don’t know why, probably because Armagh wore it on prototype summer days in Clones. The 2002 Armagh jersey was a pig, but it was a fondly remembered pig.
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I think much like Offaly itself, for a pig ignorant shower of fuckers, there was and is an absolute beauty to how they played the game in the 90’s. Even their footballers pulled it out of the bag for a few years. And having an iconic change strip helps too.
The chevrons were much better, couldnt find a picture of them. I thought the 99 one was a little busy, but much better than the 2002 yoke which was simply ugly and the wrong shade.
The Offaly jersey of 1994 (it was first worn at the 1994 Leinster hurling final against Wexford) utilised a common feature of O’Neill’s designs of the 1990s, which was the hoop around the shoulder. But it was more “out there” because the white hoop around the shoulder acted as a bridge between the green upper part of the jersey and the gold sleeves. Lots of other counties used this style, but always with only two colours involved, not three.
This style was used by Meath on and off in the 1990s, Cork from 1994 to 1999, Limerick in 1994, Laois around 1995, Tipperary in 1995, and Tyrone from 1999-2003.
However, the first county to use this style was Derry in 1992, and the Tyrone 1999-2003 jersey was pretty much a rip off of the Derry 1992 jersey, shown here:
This was not an O’Neill’s jersey. I don’t know who made it, I presume it was some local manufacturer, but this jersey was made from more silky association football type fabric rather than the common O’Neill’s type polyester of the time, which stained like hell if you got water or anything else on it. This was a shortlived jersey design and was only worn four times ever to my knowledge, but it proved very influential as O’Neills spent the next decade ripping off the design, and I don’t think it worked as well on any other county with the possible exception of Offaly - but that was a three colour job, not a two colour job.
Derry also had a pretty funky looking 1991 jersey and this was definitely not an O’Neill’s design either.
O’Neill’s actually had two different types of polyester they used for GAA. One was the one used by Dublin, Down and the Donegal Magee jersey around that time and I think was the more common type. It was a little bit silkier than the other type but still had a 1980s sackful of school jerseys type feel off it. The other type of polyester O’Neill’s used was a woolier type, which was used by Derry in 1993 and perhaps by Laois and I think by Mayo in 1996-99. It was a Connolly’s type fabric.
From the 1994 Dublin jersey on, O’Neill’s did a bizarre thing where the sleeves were made out of a different type of fabric to the main jersey, the sleeve would be made of a type of fabric which felt much more “soccery” but the main part of the jersey would be made from the traditional GAA type fabric. With Dublin this continued up as far as the 1998-99 jersey, which I identify as a loser jersey. Then in 2000 the new “blobby” Dublin jersey was the first one to use the association football type fabric entirely.
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I remember both those Derry jerseys well, and fondly. The fabric of GAA jerseys up to the turn of the century were something else, actually they were far worse in the early 90’s than late 90’s. I remember goalies jerseys were particularly shocking, with the soccer type padding on the elbows being incorporated to some county jerseys. So while outfielders were getting lighter jerseys, keepers ones were actually getting heavier. God help anyone wearing one when it rained. Then you had some counties going full soccer with their goalie jeseys.
Ah this is a rabbit hole I could go down and never come back from. PITJ is a good website chronicling all the county jerseys.
I don’t want to imagine how much John O’Leary’s jersey in the 1994 All-Ireland final would have weighed by the end. The shade of blue Dublin wore that day steadily changed as the match wore on, so much so that poor Sean Cahill and Johnny Barr looked like they were representing a mysterious third team on the pitch when they came on as subs.
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Would be a nice one without the sponsor in fairness
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Whatever material they’re using for IC jerseys now is absolute gick. They all look like shite.
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Those dots are a lovely nod to the old electronic scoreboard on the Nally Stand which in a different lifetime used to routinely show Meath leading Dublin.
I guess Meath have to look to anything at all they can think of for inspiration.
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