We made a profound discovery recently, one which swept away a decade of ignorance caused by a misunderstanding and the lingering emotion of big game defeat…

Hull City DID have game detail carrying anthem jackets for the 2014 FA Cup final.

So how did we finally reach that truth and why didn’t we know this much, much sooner? The answer to that first question is research into not just the 2014 FA Cup final attire, but the pre-match jackets of all finalists who used or had them. I’m a big fan of pre-match jackets so set myself the task of cataloguing some of them, more for my own amusement than to share, but eventually I had enough to form an article [A Closer Look At… FA Cup final jackets]

It seemed a good subject to discuss on The Football Kit Podcast too, so fellow hosts Denis and Gav drafted some questions to ask me about cup final jackets, and one was “why didn’t your own side, Hull City, wear jackets in 2014”?

I realised that I’d pitched that question to the kitman before, but I couldn’t fully remember the answer. I dimly recalled it being “we had the standard jackets from the season but chose not to wear them”, or similar.

I’d taken that, wrongly I know now, to mean “we didn’t add any game detail to the pre-existing jackets, and didn’t wear them in any case”. So prepping for that question I realised I needed to confirm why we didn’t have jackets, so I asked again, “How come we didn’t have any cup final jackets in 2014?” and when the answer was “we did but the players chose not to wear them, as I remember it was a pretty warm day”, I followed up with “Did they have any game detail added? Or where they as were used during the season?”

The response made me feel like Chief Brody in Jaws*…

“They had the same print as the match shirts”

The first thing I felt was silly. I’d spend 18 months researching every FA Cup final pre-match jacket, and my knowledge of my own club’s final apparel was faulty. For shame. The second thing I felt was regret, at not seeking clarification all that time ago, for proceeding with false assumption. The third thing I felt was jacket envy and materialistic need. I try to follow the philosophy of the Stoics these days, the principles of controlling your perspective, managing expectations and acceptance appeal to me, but then being a match-worn shirt collector brings me into direct conflict with the notion of not having attachment to material possessions.

Getting hold of one might take years, I’ve learnt that this hobby is a long game, and after all it has taken me a decade to realise these jackets exist, so the first order of business is finding some images, possession can wait.

Searching for images brought another self-respect smashing realisation: I’d had evidence of the jackets existence on my hard drive for many years, and I’d just missed it. Former club photographer Dave Richardson shared a whole wodge of his work when hanging up the telephoto lens, and I’d looked through hundreds and hundreds of stunningly high def action images from the final many times.

What I hadn’t done though, is fully gone through the folder called ‘Post Match’. Seeing the first of the images, City players prostrate on the Wembley turf, physically spent and emotionally desolate, it was too much and I closed the browser, and seemingly never went back. If I had, here’s what I would have seen.

Liam Rosenior, who was replaced by George Boyd in extra time, be-jacketed and helping Jake Livermore recover from cramp.

The future gaffer getting a consoling cuddle from kitman John Eyre, and showing us the back of jacket sponsor applique.

Unused subs Rober Koren, Maynor Figueroa, Yannick Sagbo and Steve Harper wearing the jackets descending the steps to and from the ‘Royal Box’

So there you have it. Some lessons learned: Ask supplementary questions and check understanding instead of making assumptions, and don’t let emotion get in the way of kit research. Still, the knowledge that Hull City Association Football Club did indeed have cup final anthem jackets with game detail when you’d thought they hadn’t for a long time is rather gratifying. Being wrong and having the wrongness highlighted has never felt better!

• *That effect, the dolly zoom, or the “Hitchcock zoom” after it’s use in the Alfred Hitchcock directed Vertigo, is created by pulling a camera dolly backwards while the camera zooms in. You probably don’t give a hoot about this, but my mind wanders a lot. For me, the best execution was in the Babylon 5 episode ‘Severed Dreams’, where it allows you to share the feeling of shock and situational change felt by Captain Sheridan.

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