Inside Track: A colourful look at teams and their jerseys

Louth senior footballers are to be seen out in new colours next season. It’s not known how many changes of gear there have been since the all-red jersey was first replaced. Fair to say there have been many.

White with red trimmings, and vice versa, and then on more than one occasion, a darker shade of black. That latter led to a lot of tut-tutting, but not as much as there was back in 1975 when Jimmy Mulroy’s team – myself and Liam Leech were providing back-up to the manager – ran on the Croke Park for a Leinster championship first round match.

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There was the traditional red jersey, okay, but what caused many in authority – and in the stands – to ask, ‘What’s going on here’, there were the matching red togs and socks.

In ways, the team and its management were rebelling. Having stayed on long after the planned departure time in the famous Delaney pub in Portlaoise after the final match of the previous league campaign, singing and quenching their thirst, the team, and all connected with it, came in for sharp criticism from the County Board.

The group had travelled together in a bus, and because of his late arrival home, the driver put in for ‘blue-eye’, better known as overtime.

The bill was sent to the County Board, and this didn’t sit well with them. Through accident or design – probably the latter – there was no County Board involvement when the team returned for championship training in Ardee.

More than that, there was no request to St Mary’s to provide the after-training eats, which had been part and parcel of sessions over the previous couple of years.

No-one left training, however, without sustenance. Leslie Toal, the team full-back, prevailed upon Frank McDermott, who had only returned from America and taken over a milk-run in Dundalk, to provide a crate of his freshest beverage for each training session.

Frank, who would later become a valued member of the county’s Supporters’ Club, readily agreed. We’d know Toal was coming when we’d hear the rattle of bottles. What it all did was build a stronger than ever camaraderie in the panel.

It was one of the players who suggested the team turning out in all-red for the Wicklow match. Not only did Mulroy agree, he was the one who bought the togs and socks in Dublin the following day.

Peadar McParland was in sparkling form in the rout of the flower-growers, scoring six points from play in his midfielder role. If there was still a murmur over the gear after that game, it turned to silence following the defeat of newly-crowned league winners, Meath, next time out.

It was a matter for conjecture why the County Board chose to play local championship matches in between the Meath game and the semi-final with All-Ireland champions Dublin.

One of the fixtures had Cooley Kickhams paired with their keen rivals at the time, Newtown Blues, and though the leg injury he sustained was accidental, Peadar McParland was left with a fight on his hands to be ready for the semi-final.

He made the starting fifteen, but wasn’t able to do himself justice in an area where Dublin had Brian Mullins and Bernard Brogan sited.

The attendance at Páirc Tailteann was 31,000, and among them were Louth supporters waving a banner with ‘Come on the Red Devils’ written on it. This nod to Manchester United was something else that might not have gone down too well with some.

A high-scoring game ended in a 3-14 to 4-7 win for Dublin, Louth having come from 12 points down to stage a rally that came up just short.

You could have guessed it. At a County Board meeting soon afterwards, the team wearing the all-red gear came up for mention, a delegate complaining, “We didn’t wear that when we won the All-Ireland in ’57.”

He was right, of course. But what he forgot, or didn’t realise, was that Louth wore the green of Leinster and Cork were in Munster blue. No second strips in those days.

Let’s remain on colours. It’s been mentioned here time and time again – it even gets a run in another piece on these pages – that the jerseys worn by Munster club hurling champions, Ballygunner, carry the red of Louth and black of Dundalk FC. They were chosen by the club’s founder, Dundalk-born schoolteacher, James McGinn.

Closer to home, it was another Dundalk man – whose name doesn’t come to mind – who suggested to the fledgling Crossmaglen Rangers club, back at the beginning of the 1900s, that they should wear black-and-amber.

He was a traveller – now known as a rep – working for a Dundalk firm. Crossmaglen was one of his areas, and in attendance at the meeting at which the Rangers came into being, came up with the idea of the new club adopting the colours worn by the Louth senior champions of 1907 and ’08, Dundalk Rangers.

He might even have suggested the use of Rangers. Immediately prior to that, the Crossmaglen team was known as Red Hands.