A wildly entertaining, fiercely contested game played before a crowd in fine voice, the 3-3 draw with Ipswich on Saturday night will live long in the memory. It will be remembered for kit shenanigans too, as City opted to wear their change kit at home.

We enquired about the thinking behind wearing the all-amber kit, wondering if it was a quasi-superstitious attempt to bring the Tigers pretty decent away form to the MKM Stadium, and the answer we got was “the Gaffer likes the brightness of the amber kit, especially in night games”. Makes sense, a bright kit registers in peripheral vision quicker than a dark kit and could aid team mate recognition, a practical reason rather than luck courting.

There’s nothing wrong with this in terms of the EFL’s rules of course, any of the three registered kits can be used as the club see fit, but not wearing your ‘home’ kit at home is viewed as a ‘kit crime’ by some.

I can have **some** sympathy with that view, and going back to 2021/22 I was unamused by then boss Shota Arveladze insisting the ‘blackout’ change kit be used at home for the visit of Cardiff, as the evidently superstitious Georgian tried to change the team’s fortunes.

But this feels different, far more acceptable, and mainly because our change kit is amber and black… it’s our regular colours, just in a different proportion to how they appear on the primary, or ‘home’ kit.

Indeed, when the all-amber kit was revealed before the start of the season I suggested, even welcomed the possibility of a home game in a kit that to the rest of the footballing world passes as a home kit, I just figured it might happen in a cup game.

The club subtly announced the amber kit would be used through use of images of players in the change shirt ahead of the game on social media, they also posted “Tomorrow night, we need you to be loud, proud, and bright in amber!” which brings to mind when American college teams hold ‘”‘whiteout’ or ‘redout’ etc games to encourage the crowd to wear the same colour as the team they’re cheering.

It was a noble effort, but the game being played at 8pm on a Saturday probably influenced the Tiger Nation’s clothing decisions over the will to create a ‘sea of amber’.

---

If you want to know how many times we’ve worn all-amber this season, or indeed any of the kits, our season tracker is HERE