Cod Almighty | Diary
30 years of shirt
3 July 2026
Kit-launch day! Time to celebrate rampant commercialism by affirming our very concrete allegiance through our wallets rather than the very abstract allegiance we can all claim through our hearts. Only the concrete adds to the coffers, however, and who am I to try to deny the club a summer pay day? And, let's be honest, I would be buying one meself if I didn't look so ridiculous in stripes these days - definitely more Obelix than Beetlejuice.
Your A46 Diary has just heard the interview with head of marketing, Jack Johnson, who designed the beautiful new shirt. The annual interview. Each year now we hear about the 'story' behind the new shirt and how it's been in the design stage for a 'long, long time'. It's all about knitting design, merch and story together, from 'ideation stages' to actual production, he says, and then reassures us he is pulling our emotional levers, not our legs.
Two years in a row now, it's been nostalgia that's driven the design. Anyone under the age of about 37 will just have to trust us that these 'call-back kits' really do create a flood of memories, chapters from previous stories written by heroes of old. Heroes of now get to write new chapters in familiar stripes. New strip: new stories. Or extended stories? Continuing stories? Soap operas? Not so often these days.
A kit needing a story is a 21st-century thing. Kits were smart or they weren't. Now, in slow summer, no-news months, the kit is the story; it becomes the connection between club and fans. Or should I say between brand and fans? The kit and the club aren't the same thing. The colours are cemented in our identity, but the kit? The kit is branding. Temporary branding. That concrete sign of allegiance, for all its emotional lever-pulling, doesn't last very long at all.
And yet the annual kit launch is now a firm part of our summer of anticipation, something to look forward to, to comment on, to share, to flood our socials with while we wait for the first friendlies to start. Today is release day and I expect there will already be pictures online with smiling Mariners squeezed into black and white stripes. The question many want answered, but few will dare ask, will slip into one thread and be read carefully by the belly-booming Gen-X targets of the shirt's story of nostalgia: Lotto instead of Umbro? Will I need three-, four- or five-X this year? Had a four-X last year but it got a bit tight by the end. There's a six-X this year? Great!
I do like the shirt. That simple monochrome of the old Lotto has long been my favourite, and it's lovely to see those clean stripes back again. The club have quite reasonably focused on players of the 96-97 season, but let's not forget 97-98: Donovan and Burnett wore that shirt, Gallimore wore it, Jack Lester wore it, Groves returned to us in it. Leicester City were beaten in that shirt. Paolo Di Canio played against that shirt. Michael Owen got his first senior hattrick against that shirt.
I was also excited by the Umbro in the 24-25 season. My first Town top for many years, that one was bought as a 50th birthday gift by my work colleagues and was the strip that nailed my Obelix-shaped coffin. Shame we didn't have many amazing memories in it. Last season's was pretty meh for me, and the day after Manchester United when I popped out to buy up as many newspapers as I could, I had a little moment of regret that we hadn't had our greatest night in 90 years in those beautiful, red-fringed stripes.
It's all good, it's all bad. It all makes the football club. I'm a fan hungry for news, happy to be dazzled by new merch and still wishing for simpler times. Heart is important. The strip is important. The brand is important. Let's bring it all together and make a season of black and white-striped stories.