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.
