Pulling on the shirt

Merchandising and football now go together like beef and gravy. They do exist as separate entities but to serve up one without the other would be like offering orphaned twins to different adoptive families, Dickensian in its cruelness. So entwined are they that it is now practically impossible to support a football team without dipping a toe, reluctantly perhaps, into the pool of corporate salesmanship.

Even if you are one of the very few people who have have never bought something with your club’s name on it you will still encounter some executive’s boardroom brainwave whether it be the way in which you buy your tickets or simply by visiting the club’s official website. And there is nothing wrong with that, nothing at all.

As we have recently learnt to our cost, imagining that football can exist outside the world of commercial reality is a fancy that should be left behind with childish things. In some venerated cases merchandising provides a little cream off the top for clubs that would be fabulously wealthy anyway, but for the vast majority of clubs merchandising is a necessity of existence. The League of Ireland is, of course, very much in the latter camp.

Of course, any club’s attitude to merchandising will be determined by its environment and thankfully our league doesn’t offer sufficient reward, sorry - market opportunity, for it to have descended to the rapacious level of our cousins across the water. I recently bought two tickets for a West Ham game online and now get daily emails along the lines of “Scott Parker hopes to see you at the Arsenal game.” I doubt very much whether Scott was hoping anything of the kind although I do like the idea of him slumped in the corner of the dressing room before the game with a furrowed brow.


“Scotty! What’s the problem?”
“I’m sorry Avram, it’s just that we haven’t heard anything from Simon and I’m worried that he’s not going to make it”
“We’re all worried about that Scott. Simon means so much to all of us here at West Ham, but you know, life goes on. Eh? Am I right?”
Invigorated by his manager’s inspiring words Scotty jumps to his feet and declares to his team mates, “Come on lads, let’s do this for Simon!”

I’m still waiting for the follow up mail, “Dear Simon, Scott was devastated that you couldn’t be here for the visit of Arsenal. Please don’t tell him I contacted you but if you could make the United match I know it would mean the world to him”.

While this invasive, and frankly ludicrous, form of marketing is irritating there are many other forms of club salesmanship that offer genuine pleasure to the fans and have earned a place in the game’s modern culture. Buying a replica shirt is probably the most visible and popular example.

Younger fans might be surprised to learn that it was not always the case that everyone in the land had a club shirt or three in their wardrobe. There was a time, not long ago, when wearing the club jersey was a privilege that only the players enjoyed. Fans declared their loyalty with scarves, bobble hats and, if you were a serious die hard, a random jumper vaguely aligned to the colour of your team. But that was as far as it went, anything more and you were in danger of becoming the club weirdo. But today we are a more ostentatious lot and there is no question that the modern sea of colour enhances the matchday experience. Apart from the awesome display of unity that a throng of replica kits can express, they also offer a sense of celebration and even of joy.

Nowhere is this more apparent than at a World Cup where, for example, the Netherlands have excelled at turning their section of the ground into a jaw dropping mass of orange. But haven’t we also lost something with the ready availability of shirts that were once sacrosanct? We often hear footballers talk about the honour of “pulling on the shirt”. It is a phrase that comes from a time when the only people that got to do that were men who had earned the right. Quite simply, if you pulled a St Patrick’s Athletic shirt over your head it meant that you were a St Patrick’s Athletic player, and the honour and sense of achievement that went with it was limited to a very select band of fellow players.

Nowadays any beer gutted fifty year old can don his club’s sacred jersey without being in any danger of confusing anyone. In fact, given that actual players rarely if ever wear their shirts off the pitch, doing so has become a pretty concrete sign that you would favour a beer and pizza to actually playing a game of footy any day of the week.

I guess I should point out, before anyone gets insulted here, that my gut is far from being a washboard, I am closer to fifty than thirty, and I am a huge fan of both beer and pizza. I also own several replica shirts myself. Most of them were presents from thoughtful members of the family and I’m glad I have them, but I have found, down the years, that I hardly ever wear them. I’m not entirely sure why that is but perhaps it is feeling, not quite strong enough to identify itself, that I am not worthy.

Am I alone in that? I can’t believe I’m the only one who feels just a little bit uncomfortable when I see a man more likely to be a professional eater than a professional footballer, or a rake thin teenager who would last no more than five minutes on a field before being returned to the dugout in a wheelbarrow, snapped neatly in two, each bedecked in their club’s uniform? I refuse to believe that I am the only man in the world who can’t sleep because of this God awful pea under my stack of mattresses?

After all, many of us were reared as Catholics but I don’t ever remember a time when the congregation attended mass in replica purple vestments with Fr. Murphy emblazoned across the shoulders. So when exactly did all this start? And why? Well, to answer the first question, I would guess it was around the time of the first shirt sponsorships in the eighties, when club officials began to realise that the bits of cloth they draped around their players could turn into nice little earners. As to why it happened, look no further than the dream of every young boy to wear the battle fatigues of his favourite warriors. Once replica shirts were available they were a guaranteed hit and they are worn for the same reason that Mount Everest was climbed, because they are there.

Perhaps it is just me clinging to the notion that the old way was best and that the exclusivity of a club shirt should be more jealously guarded. And it’s probably a good thing too. I know that the vast majority of fans see nothing more in it than a laudable identification with their team. For my part I have often been told that I have a penchant for nostalgia and that it’s not good for me, an assessment that I heartily agree with. I do not, in fact, begrudge anyone the right to express their loyalty with the latest XXL from the club shop. It’s just that a little part of me remembers the long ago dream of pulling on a shirt for real and is obstinately dissatisfied with simply going out and buying one.