Hull City Kits were delighted to display a modest selection of match-worn shirts at the second ‘Forever Tigers’ memorabilia event facilitated by the Tigers Trust (in collaboration with the Senior Tigers) on Thursday 30th May.

These monthly gatherings start with walking football, before attendees are furnished with a free hot drink and biscuits, test their knowledge in a Hull City quiz covering various eras and take a good look at collections of memorabilia.

With the European Championships just weeks away, we took some match-worn England and Scotland shirts from Euro ’88 and Euro ’92 as well as Tigers shirts used in first team action between 1965-1984.

Several former players attended: Ken Wagstaff, Tom Wilson, John Hawley, Rob McDonald and Stan McEwan, and each took an interest in the shirts and shared anecdotes of kits they had worn. It was particularly gratifying to see Waggy take in the 1975-80 Europa away shirt that I believe he’ll have worn in his final season at the club.

I took advantage of this encounter with former players to increase my kit knowledge. Sadly John Hawley doesn’t recall what he wore when playing in the Anglo-Italian Cup match away to Bari in 1973, only that whatever it was got covered in spit from hostile locals, and that he showered in the kit initially post-game.

My reason for asking was a snippet from the Friday 4th May edition of the Hull Daily Mail which suggested the Tigers wore Bari’s away kit… (Thanks to Nick Turner for sourcing this)

“Tigers lost their gear on Bari trip!

Somewhere in the world— probably in West Africa, there is around £1000-worth of Hull City kit, shirts, shorts, socks and boots, writes BRIAN TAYLOR

The basket containing City’s strip was mislaid when they were en-route to Bari on Tuesday for their Anglo- Italian game. Today the club were still making inquiries from airlines all over the world an effort to trace the gear. Secretary John Adamson thinks that the basket is probably in Accra for it was a Ghana Airways plane which took the party to Rome.

The plane was going on to Accra after stopping at Rome and it was there that the basket was lost. Searches at the other airports City called at Leeds, London, Rome and Bari failed to unearth the basket. But as yet there has no reply from Accra to City’s request for a search to be made.

The Tigers had to play Wednesday night’s game in their training boots and a set red shirts and white shorts borrowed from the Italian club. Fortunately the Tigers’ hand luggage containing their personal clothing was not lost.”

What John Hawley did remember, and this was backed up by Rob McDonald who also played for City in the 1970s before moving on, was that players didn’t train in old match kit, they had specific training gear.

We know that in the 1980s, certainly after the club narrowly survived going into receivership in 1982, the club had to ‘cut their cloth’ according to the new financial realities of City being in the bottom division, and that old match kit was recycled as training wear.

That’s evident in this picture, of gaffer Colin Appleton, who took over in 1982, putting the players through their paces in pre-season training. The players are wearing a mixture of late 70s Europa match shirts and adidas gear from our time wearing the brand with the three stripes between 1980-1982.

This thriftiness explain why the 1975-1980 Europa away shirt in our collection is signed by Les Mutrie (with City 1980-1984) who used it as training wear.

Details of the monthly ‘Forever Tigers’ memorabilia mornings hosted by the Tigers Trust can be found here… https://www.tigerstrust.co.uk/news/tigers-trust-officially-launch-forever-tigers-memorabilia-project/