How to ruin a Huddersfield Town home shirt

Snowflakes all look pretty much the same until you inspect them and realise they’re all unique. Huddersfield Town shirts work the same way. Blue and white stripes. It should be easy, but looking back over the history of Huddersfield Town home shirts since 1990, there are some common failures that have occurred when trying to get the home shirt right.

In this article, I’m going to dig into the various ways that previous kit manufacturers have made a mess of our home kit. With Town likely to announce our new Castore-made shirt in the next few days, this article will hopefully make it easier to assess whether they’ve avoided the mistakes of the past.

(Obviously, this article is all my own opinion and other fans will have their own ideas about what makes a good Town home kit. On most subjects, I’m willing to accept that other opinions are valid even if they don’t agree with my own, but I think when it comes to Town home kits, you either agree with my opinion or you’re wrong. You can disagree in the comments but I’m not likely to change my mind.)

Making the blue stripes too dark or too light

I’ve had long and boring conversations in the past about what the right blue is for a Town kit but I think there’s a pretty clear consensus when you look over the whole list of kits. The stripes should be neither too dark nor too light blue. If you’re getting close to sky blue then it’s too light and navy blue colours are too far the other way. I think the darker shades actually look pretty decent, but they just aren’t the right shade. I have a feeling most people’s opinions on the colour will relate to the time period they started supporting Town, with most people having a preference for the first shade they saw the Terriers play in.

Getting the stripes wrong

The stripes are a crucial part of a good Town home kit and it’s another where it needs to land in the Goldilocks zone of not being too many or too few. The 20/21 season kit featured ridiculously fat stripes that looked all wrong. The 22/23 season swung the other way and looks far too much like a Tesco carrier bag. The other shirts I’ve picked below don’t look too bad from a distance but closer inspection shows a deviation from a plain stripe. The Pulse shirt from 94/95 has red piping between the blue and white, which ties in nicely with the red text for the sponsor but is still too much. The 17/18 Premier League shirt has a stupid effect on the blue to make it look like it’s merging into the white, far too much. The 00/01 has an unnecessary pinstripe detail which some may like but I find it spoils the purity of the stripes. Similarly, the home shirt from the season just gone has intricate detail on the stripes as a nod to the town’s connection with the textile industry, a nice sentiment but a bit fussy in my opinion.

The sponsor spoiling the design

The sponsor should not be the main feature of a football shirt but there are several examples of Town getting this wrong. Both Pure Legal designs introduce far too much white space around the sponsor and interfere too much with the stripes (not to mention reminding us of our past owner and his shenanigans). The Casino Red and OPE designs aren’t actually too bad in terms of aesthetics, but I think we should avoid accepting money from gambling firms. I don’t have any problem with sports betting in theory but I think a club that prides itself on helping the community shouldn’t advertise something that is harmful to a lot of people (though I’m dubious about whether OPE ever actually took any bets outside of China). The 09/10 featured a sponsor everyone can get behind, in the Yorkshire Air Ambulance, but the sheer size of the logo really ruins that shirt and is overkill.

Trying too hard to be different

The best shirt designs don’t try to reinvent the wheel or dabble in snazzy designs. Away kits are a good place to experiment and home shirts should follow tradition as much as possible while varying the theme slightly to make it fresh. The examples below are all too far away from the traditional design. Obviously the Paddy Power one was a joke shirt that we only used for one friendly and resulted in a fine for the club. Though I think my all-time least favourite home shirt is the 14/15 one, where the blue stripes fade out towards the bottom. Awful. The 15/16 shirt isn’t too bad but the black sleeve stripes don’t belong there and the Argentina shade of blue is too far a deviation from the norm. I’ve already covered how the others have let themselves down above, mostly just by trying too hard to make a splash.

Stripes not continuing on the sleeves

The below shirts are all relatively decent (apart form the 20/21 monstrosity) but something just looks off when the sleeves are either solid blue or white. Visually, stripes on the sleeves can look a bit messy and the shirts below look cleaner for opting for a solid colour but it just doesn’t look like a Huddersfield Town shirt to me.

A note about collars

There has been a trend over the last 35 years away from collars on Town home shirts. Personally, I prefer a collar but if everything else is right then no collar doesn’t ruin a Town shirt. If you’re curious, every Town home shirt in the nineties had a collar, around half did in the decade after 2000 but there was a decline in the 2010s which has continued into the 2020s.

I’d guess that the players would rather not have a collar flapping around when they’re playing but from a fan’s perspective, I think they look smarter.

How to make the perfect Huddersfield Town home shirt

Here’s a quick checklist of what I think makes the ideal Huddersfield Town home kit:

✔ A shade of blue that isn’t too light or too dark

✔ Stripes that are not too wide and not too thin

✔ A sponsor that doesn’t interfere with the design and isn’t a dodgy company

✔ No silly embellishments like fading stripes or fancy patterns

✔ Stripes that continue onto the arms

✔ BONUS: Having a proper collar

Using the above criteria, there are five shirts in the last thirty-five years that have ticked all these boxes. The additional criteria of the collar has ruled out a lot of recent designs but when I look at the lineup below they all seem like proper Town shirts and deserve to be on this list. The 98/99 shirt (which was also used in 97/98) is my personal favourite because it was the home shirt when I first became serious about following Town and I’ve worn it to two successful playoff finals.

Though what really makes a Town kit great is…

… the players that wear it.

We’ll be seeing a new addition to this collection in the next few days and the design will obviously come under great scrutiny. However, the most important thing will be how Town’s players perform while wearing this kit. We’re all hopeful that this season will mark a new era for Town and see some good times return to the John Smith’s Stadium (soon to be called something else). |Hopefully, we’ll see plenty of happy moments in the new Town shirt, regardless of the width of the stripes or the size of the sponsor.

Check out every Huddersfield Town kit since 1990

The idea for this article came from seeing the above graphic online. I don’t know much about www.casualfootballshirts.co.uk but I’m grateful to them for putting together this interesting graphic of Town shirts through the years. If enough people enjoy this article, I’ll do another one about the best and worst Town away kits.

What is your personal favourite Huddersfield Town home shirt? Put your thoughts in the comments below.