Re: www.footyjumpers.com
Ah, a pity.
Have you read that article? It is really interesting. Funny how association football clubs generally wear vertical stripes, rugby union clubs generally wear hoops and rugby league clubs generally wear Vs. I wonder how Australian football clubs ended up with a mixed bag, plus sashes?
Also very interesting to read that many original soccer kits had unusual colour combinations but mostly died out, and that Aston Villa's iconic kit sparked a series of copies.
Don't worry about the history of the game, that's everywhere. But I've never read anything about the history of guernseys apart from anyone but you.
We started out with blokes just wearing the one jumper they owned, which was almost always Blue.
The reason for the Blue was it was the only Dye that would leave the natural water-proof ability wool has. Every other dye stripped this out of the wool, meaning when it rained, you got wet. With a Blue jumper, the outside got wet, but inside didn't.
The first uniforms bought out from England were simply socks. Teams went about playing with socks, and then caps as the identifier.
Some clubs made an effort to co-ordinate their look, Melbourne wearing White cricket shirts for a while, then Magenta, which was essentially dying the White shirts Pink.
Given Blue was the standard colour, this was what was brought out from England, along with Bleu & White hoops.
Some have suggested this is an Oxford (Blue) and Cambridge (Blue & White hoops) University thing, though I have no evidence to support or deny this claim.
Regardless, Melbourne, Essendon, Carlton, Richmond all started in Blue.
Geelong, North (Hotham), South (Albert Pk), Footscray all started in Blue & White hoops.
Eventually more & more uniforms were bought in from England and essentially clubs only really tinkered with what they had.
Footscray added Red, North changed the direction from hoops to stripes, South changed from Blue & White to Red & White when they merged with Albert Pk.
Essendon added a sash, so did Richmond. Carlton & Melbourne added 'trimmings'.
Stkilda got some of the first non-Blue related colours. They were Black & Red, as Essendon were, but actually wore Black & Red jerseys before Essendon. Essendon wore Blue up to about 1890, StKilda had Black & Red hoops in the 1880s. They added a White scarf, then eventually went to Red Black & White stripes before Essendon adopted the Black with Red sash jumper.