Analysis What is going on with our home strip?

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Bertie22

Team Captain
Apr 22, 2018
388
1,920
AFL Club
North Melbourne
Yes that has been getting on my goat for some time. Granted it won't change what is happening on field right now, but I just see it as more examples of us as a Club being pushovers. (A wider issue for another time.) We pioneered coloured shorts (ie not black or white) on 24 August 1974 at Arden Street against Collingwood. (Happy to be corrected.) It was a big win on our way to a first GF since 1950. We wore the royal blue shorts in the 74 GF too. It was 'controversial' of course, because it was North bucking the trend, but once more we were ahead of the pack, especially with colour TV only 6 months away. Anyway, I get cross and have to watch the BP whenever I see our team run out in an almost white strip at any time, but spare me for HOME games. Yes I am an old f--t, but I just see us caving on so many levels these days. And get rid of those b----y hooped socks too. We went to royal blue socks in the late 60s for a reason. Rant over for the moment. Future rants on Friday Night Footy, Grand Final Breakfasts, leadership at all levels of the Club are for another time.
 
I've said this a few times in other threads. Glad you brought it up. Home should be blue shorts. We're basically wearing an away strip at our home games at the moment. The only time the blue shorts have made an appearance was away against Sydney, right?
And ironically the only game we played well in

White shorts = s**t performance
 
Aug 16, 2009
10,270
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North Caulfield
AFL Club
North Melbourne
Some good replies in here…..I just don’t get WTF we need to be wearing away shorts. Turn on Anzac Day, * Home team, low and behold, in black shorts, pies in white shorts.
What did we wear in the diabolical kangaroo strip against Brisbane? I think it was white shorts as well.
It’s a small thing, and I get that it mightn’t bother others, but we are NMFC and this is what our home strip looks like? No it’s not.
 

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Aug 16, 2009
10,270
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North Caulfield
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North Melbourne
Dark shorts for home and light shorts for away is long gone. We have a predominantly white jumper so it's always going to be the case that we wear white shorts more often than not.
Since when though DocSholl? Cats have as much white as we do?
I absolutely hate it.
……and yep Geelong’s strip looked heaps better.
 

sruss

Club Legend
Feb 12, 2016
1,781
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AFL Club
North Melbourne
Could be wrong, but isn’t the whole reason we changed to a blue home strip with Canterbury is bc AFL wouldnt let us wear blue shorts with a white home jumper? And the club decided that blue shorts were more important than the white vase on the home guernsey?

I’m not fussed personally, I think the white shorts looks fine.
 

Cold Gin

All Australian
Oct 12, 2010
918
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AFL Club
North Melbourne
It's a result of the AFL's nonsensical policy that one team will wear a predominantly white / light guernsey, and the other dark. To "improve the look." And thank heavens, too, because footy was previously unwatchable, right? Seriously...

The worst thing about it is the AFL decides who will wear what, and there is precisely zero regard given to who is the home team. North has more white in its jumper than most opponents, and will therefore wear white shorts almost all of the time. It's the reason we wore the reverse, white-on-blue jumper for a few years - so we could wear blue shorts.

Why does the AFL have a such a special ability to make the most absurd decisions, and implement objectively dumb policies? This is just wrong! And I wonder if there's another price to be paid by clubs like ours: our jumper looks significantly better when paired with blue shorts, so does being forced to wear white so often make the club look less appealing to the neutral eye? Does the inability to regularly present ourselves in our optimal colours have an impact on merchandise sales, and even supporter-growth? I don't know the answer, but I do know that in business, image and marketing is critical.

Aside from, arguably, financial management, is there one single aspect of its administration of the game the AFL does well? There's a case to say that the rules, umpiring, overall fan-experience, floating fixture, and even the game itself, have never been in a worse state than now.
 
Aug 16, 2009
10,270
20,886
North Caulfield
AFL Club
North Melbourne
It's a result of the AFL's nonsensical policy that one team will wear a predominantly white / light guernsey, and the other dark. To "improve the look." And thank heavens, too, because footy was previously unwatchable, right? Seriously...

The worst thing about it is the AFL decides who will wear what, and there is precisely zero regard given to who is the home team. North has more white in its jumper than most opponents, and will therefore wear white shorts almost all of the time. It's the reason we wore the reverse, white-on-blue jumper for a few years - so we could wear blue shorts.

Why does the AFL have a such a special ability to make the most absurd decisions, and implement objectively dumb policies? This is just wrong! And I wonder if there's another price to be paid by clubs like ours: our jumper looks significantly better when paired with blue shorts, so does being forced to wear white so often make the club look less appealing to the neutral eye? Does the inability to regularly present ourselves in our optimal colours have an impact on merchandise sales, and even supporter-growth? I don't know the answer, but I do know that in business, image and marketing is critical.

Aside from, arguably, financial management, is there one single aspect of its administration of the game the AFL does well? There's a case to say that the rules, umpiring, overall fan-experience, floating fixture, and even the game itself, have never been in a worse state than now.
Just a pretty weak response from NMFC then if that is the case.
If you tuned in yesterday as a neutral, you’d swear we were the away team. Another tradition gone
 

DocSholl

Club Legend
Aug 10, 2021
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In Arjen's head
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GWS
Since when though DocSholl? Cats have as much white as we do?
I absolutely hate it.
……and yep Geelong’s strip looked heaps better.

Our home jumper is a white background, so it would make no sense for the Cats to wear a predominantly white jumper as well.

if we want to wear blue shorts in games like yesterday then we needed to keep the blue background home jumper.
 
Aug 16, 2009
10,270
20,886
North Caulfield
AFL Club
North Melbourne
Our home jumper is a white background, so it would make no sense for the Cats to wear a predominantly white jumper as well.

if we want to wear blue shorts in games like yesterday then we needed to keep the blue background home jumper.
That’s why you have away strips mate. They could’ve worn that navy jumper with white shorts. Not our issue. ...up to the cats to have a clash strip.
It might not be important to u, but it is to me. We have a clash strip for away games. I don’t luv the clash strip, but I love the home strip we have worn for the 50 years I’ve been following North. When I think of all the famous north players, over the years, they are wearing our jumper with blue shorts
Anyway, I’m sure absolutely nothin will change.
 

hcd199

Club Legend
Apr 29, 2009
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Hobart
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North Melbourne
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Our home strip has reverted from something that definitely never felt like our 'proper' home strip (blue-based guernsey/blue shorts) to one that, I expect, will generally be our 'proper' strip (white-based guernsey/blue shorts) except when playing the majority royal blue teams or the other 'white with blue' team, all three of whom we happen to have played in our first three home games, in which case we switch to white/white and they switch to/stay in blue/blue.

If those are the two options, I'm happier with the latter. Wearing an alternate jumper entirely for all home games, even if it was a tasteful inversion of our 'proper' one, was always far more of a concession than wearing 'away' shorts in home games a couple of times. At least this way, we should be in our most resplendent combination reasonably often (including sometimes when away, as in R4 v Sydney); I think the only time we came close in the last five years was with the Indigenous Round kit v Richmond in 2019, which only served as a reminder of what we were missing out on on all other occasions.

Would it be even better if we could dictate our home kit, and all opponents had to devise a suitable alternate? Probably, yes, although it would depend how overzealous the AFL would be in defining what's acceptable (what might we be precluded from wearing away against, say, Geelong?), and I think there is something to be said for mutually acceptable arrangements (of the kind Eddie McGuire accused Geelong of not honouring a couple of years ago) rather than either creating more of a clash, or away teams being made to go out in something that succeeds in avoiding the clash but makes the whole contest look uglier as a result. Another possibly-preferable option would be white/blue home where allowed but favouring blue/blue over white/white. But based on the AFL's general approach for some time now (and not merely some sort of bogus anti-North thing, like having to wear clash kits in home games against Collingwood was), those options aren't likely to be available.

We'll see how things play out for the rest of the season, of course, and I'll be quite disappointed if the white/blue combination doesn't show up for basically all home games for the rest of the year. I also don't understand not having a blue-based away kit; will be interesting to see what we do in the return match against Geelong, but either way I'd be happier not see us in whatever it was we wore against Brisbane in R3 ever again. But as I mentioned, given the choice between the last five years and (what I figure to be) the current arrangement, I'm happier with what we're doing now.
 

Themanbun

Brownlow Medallist
Apr 19, 2019
10,043
30,805
AFL Club
North Melbourne
Sydney have worn their heritage guernsey (predominantly white) with red shorts when away in Melbourne heaps of times. I fail to see how that's any different to our predominantly white guernsey being worn with blue shorts.
 

rippersnipper

What up son, whatever
Jun 22, 2014
11,088
9,552
AFL Club
North Melbourne
The AFL has a very weak clash strip policy.

In the Premier league clubs nominate their home strip at the start of the season, plus an away and clash, and will wear their home every single home game. The away team is required to have a strip that doesn't clash, which can be any of their three kits or a combination of two of them.

For example, I'm a spurs fan and the prem would never force them to wear white shorts at home to go with the white top to reduce a potential clash. They would make the other team wear pink or orange or whatever colour away/clash they'd come up with at the start of the season.
This is how the AFL should be run. Yesterday we could have gotten away with royal blue anyway but if it didn't work Geelong should have been forced into a clash kit of a completely different colour (orange or red or whatever you want).

And yet... yesterday we had Melbourne playing Richmond in their home jumper with white shorts which looked s**t (dark vs dark), and you can bet that if this Anzac day match was reversed, Essendon would still be in a black jumper (like last year) because they're a big four club. Things like the white shorts away policy need to be binned, with clubs wearing coloured shorts to match their jumper, and clubs need to be forced to develop proper clash strips and be made to wear them with equal measure. It's infuriating the way this league is run, just Mickey Mouse stuff.
 

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