Memory Threads: Classic football shirts are little time machines

We can grumble about the money-churning spite of the seasonal shirt release, but as physicist Niels Bore once said, the opposite of a profound truth is often another profound truth. In this case, the polarising truth is that football kits define seasons and frame our memories of them, good or bad. And when we buy a football shirt, we take a slice of it home with us. 

In recent weeks, I’ve been reassessing my wardrobe ahead of a big and expensive work change, transitioning from copy editing and creative skuldugery to teacher training. The impending impoverishment has prompted me to reevaluate my classic football shirt collection and make some tough decisions. Very tough indeed.

On the chopping block are four of my five Bromley shirts, but while I was prepping them for their eBay debut, I realised that they each had a specific memory attached. And that’s just me. The same shirt could mean something entirely different to someone else, dredging up memories beyond football, memories of moments shared with ones who were but no longer are. 

There is, I realised, a visceral power in these inanimate objects. Could I seriously part with them? After all, what price can you place on a piece of material that bridges the gossamer gap betwixt present and past? What price a dream, a memory, a fantom made flesh? 

I settled on £35.

There was, however, one shirt that I just couldn’t bear to part with, and I’ll explain why in due course, but first, let us travel to meet the polyester ghosts of seasons past.

Isn’t it mad that the 2015/16 season was a decade ago? You know you’re getting on a bit when you start expressing those kinds of thoughts.

Isn’t it mad that the 2015/16 season was a decade ago? You know you’re getting on a bit when you start expressing those kinds of thoughts.This slinky little number carried Bromley during their first season in the National League, so while its material may be light, the shirt carries the soppy weight of sentiment. For me, it rewinds the tape to various moments: Gillingham in the heat of pre-season, beating Wrexham on the opening day, Moses Emmanuel scoring for fun, reality biting hard, Mark Goldberg slowly sinking out of his depth… It’s all there in a crisp, white, medium-sized nutshell.

Who is the first player you think of? I immediately see the hulking, sculpted frame of promising-but-flawed striker Alex Wall, stretching this shirt in frustration as yet another one of his efforts disappeared into Nuffield Health’s car park. There was a potent striker in there somewhere, but the stars wouldn’t align.

I still admire the wine glass-shaped collar, but the barcode detail on the side is a Marmite feature. I wonder what happens if you scan it at Tesco. And then there’s the sponsors. Better the devil you know and all that, but having a funeral director on the shirt feels like it should’ve brought bad omens. Bromley’s bell-ringing commercial department consistently court the borough’s undertakers, yet the club continues to dodge the relegation coffin. Perhaps I speak too soon. 

Needless to say, the Ravens survived their first season at the top of the non-league pyramid and secured a respectable 14th place. In truth, they’ve never looked back.

You can’t beat an anniversary shirt, can you? And 125 years is nothing to sniff at, particularly as football itself, at 160 years old, still has its new-sport smell.

While this shirt is relatively minimalist, no doubt a nod to the classic Bromley shirts of yesteryear, there is a stylistic feature that draws the eye. If you know your history, the anniversary kit represents the first appearance of the gold roundel that we know today. Note that I didn’t say ‘know and love.’

In the context of the anniversary season, it made sense: A one-off embellishment for a once-in-a-lifetime event. I was clearly on board with it at the time, as I went to the trouble of purchasing the shirt, and I’m glad I did. But little did I know a fad was beginning.

Through the wrong lens, my lens, the gold roundel on the anniversary kit is reminiscent of a coffee ring mark on a crisp white curtain, and like most coffee stains, it has been impossible to remove.

Call it garish, call it gauche, but Bromley’s gold ring hasn’t left the shirt since this fateful season. I say fateful because the Ravens wore this shirt to Wembley when they faced Brackley Town in the FA Trophy final. It didn’t end well that day, but it was all part of the club’s journey. In fact, I staunchly believe that Bromley needed to lose that game, a sentiment I tried to capture in an article I wrote earlier this year.

LINK: read here

Can I bear to part with a shirt of such significance? The eBay listing says I can. But for me, this shirt will forever conjure the image of Jack Holland, Mr Bromley himself. Jack played for many seasons, yet for some reason, this is the shirt that defines him. For me, at least.

I still like the look of this shirt, but for the life of me, I can’t remember what happened in the season it belongs to. Were we good? 

I think the reason I can’t remember this campaign is that the whole club was in a zombie trance after pissing away the FA Trophy the season before. It still hurt at this point, and the mere mention of Brackley Town had people dry-heaving.

My only memory of that season, and it’s a foggy one, stems from the FA Cup first round at Hayes Lane. League One’s Peterborough United put National League Bromley to the sword with a 3-1 romp, but it might have all been different had Frankie Raymond not fallen for some Football League dark arts and got himself sent off. We were 1-0 up, Frankie. 1-0 up!

See you soon, Peterborough.

Macron are okay, aren’t they? They must be the only Italian brand in history to crack the UK market without relentlessly banging on about their Tricolore heritage. Are they missing a trick? They seem to have done all right.

Which player do you think of? For me, it’s Roger Johnson. I wish it weren’t, but it is.

Bromley finished 10th in 18/19. I think that says it all. Nice shirt, though.

The Covid season pushed clubs and fans to the limits of their tolerance, but the football family kept the light burning, and now we’re all back to being horrid to one another. It brings a tear to the eye.

This shirt represents the light at the end of that particular tunnel. Football, against all of the obstacles placed in front of it, carried on while we watched from the safety of our sofas, and I felt compelled to support the club with a shirt purchase. It wasn’t an entirely selfless act, as the shirt is actually rather nice to look at.

You could argue that it is just the 2015/16 shirt sans barcode, plus gold details, but it’s a sound rehashing of a classic. Note that the gold colour first seen in 17/18 has spread like a rash across the seasons. It started as a ring stain, but by 20/21, it had become a main feature. Then came the all-gold third shirt in 24/25. I would scoff derisively, but if you believe the whispers, that was the club’s best-selling shirt of all time. What do I know?

A particularly sloppy 5-a-side session at Goals during lockdown left this one splashed with rubber-crum juice that wouldn’t entirely wash out. I might be tempted to call it ‘customised’, but for the sake of the purists, this one is selling for £30 rather than £35. It’s also a men’s large, whereas the others are medium (the legacy of a little lockdown weight gain). I’m a medium again now (I hope).

First player I think of when I see this shirt: Chris Bush. He had a mistake in him, and a hair-trigger self-destruct button, but when he was on his game, Bushy was (and no doubt still is) a force to be reckoned with.

Trivia: This was Andy Woodman’s first Bromley shirt when he inherited Neil Smith’s side. The Ravens scraped into the play-offs on the last day of the season wearing this little number, but only a handful of people were present on Hayes Lane’s terraces to witness the celebrations. Never again, please.

Okay, what about the one I couldn’t part with? Well, here it is…

I have a personal attachment to this shirt that goes beyond football, and it’s time for me to come clean. I forced this shirt upon Bromley FC and its fans, and I’m not sorry.

How did I commit this crime against fashion? Spins in chair while stroking cat. Well, ahead of the 08/09 season, the club’s shirt manufacturer, a brand called Accused (me neither), held an online poll that allowed fans to vote on their preferred shirt from a choice of four. 

The internet was a simpler and more naïve place back then, and this vote was the digital equivalent of a countryside honesty box. If you reset your browser, you could have another vote. So I did, hundreds of times. I doubt I was the only person committing this fraud, but I have every faith that I took it so much further than any of my fellow criminals. 

My moustache-twiddling scheme worked and the one-sleeve design won by a landslide. In fact, it had more fans than Bromley Football Club at that point in time. To the club’s credit, they acquiesced to the will of the (imaginary) people and approved the design, making it the Boaty McBoatface of its day. Footbally McFootballshirt?

Once again, sorry, not sorry. To this day, this one-sleeve design is an icon, and back in 2008, it symbolised the start of something new in BR2, something youthful. The guard was changing, and the new Turks wore their heart on their sleeve; one sleeve, always long.

This eye-catching kit frames my memories of a club that was very much on the up. This was another season of firsts, with the team facing their debut campaign in the National League South. Mark Goldberg’s talent-laden squad cruised to a tenth-place finish in the end, laying the foundation for the decade that followed. What a time to be a fan, and there weren’t many of us back then.

This shirt is Ryan Hall from the halfway line. It’s Super Nic McDonnell swerving and sweating. It’s Donal O’Sullivan playing centre-half one week and striker the next. It’s a piece of Bromley’s non-league history, hand delivered by then club secretary Colin Russell, hand-selected by my bad behaviour, and frankly, it’s crookedly sublime. That’s why I can’t give it up… Unless you offer me silly money, in which case I’ll drop it like hot snot.

So was this all just an advertorial for my eBay listings? Not at all. But since you mention it, here are the links to my buy-it-now rare-as-hen’s-teeth classic Bromley shirt bargains.

2015/16 - Medium - £35 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/278107976046

2017/18 - Medium - £35 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/278108005290

2018/19 - Medium - £35 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/278108008678

2020/21 - Large - £30 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/278108013860

Once again, not an advertorial.