Ireland shirt 1978

Perhaps this belong in the Soccer forum but an anyone remember Ireland wearing this shirt in 1978 with the encircled shamrock badge?
i imagine its just a one off shirt. it seems Chippy Brady is wearing similar in the programme with the aforementioned badge.

bonerm

Hi Tipp Gunner. Sorry that period is a bit (well a lot) before my time.

However I'm almost certain that the programme photo of Brady was taken at a game vs Bulgaria at the Vasil Levski Stadium Sofia in June 1977. Don't ask how I know this stuff (I have a knack for recognising stadia), but that might help you track it down!

Further, just now watching some footage of an Ireland game vs France in Dublin (March 1977) and it appears that they're wearing that particular shirt in that game also.

bonerm

bonerm wrote: »

Hi Tipp Gunner. Sorry that period is a bit (well a lot) before my time.

However I'm almost certain that the programme photo of Brady was taken at a game vs Bulgaria at the Vasil Levski Stadium Sofia in June 1977. Don't ask how I know this stuff (I have a knack for recognising stadia), but that might help you track it down!

Further, just now watching some footage of an Ireland game vs France in Dublin (March 1977) and it appears that they're wearing that particular shirt in that game also.

I emailed John Devlin from true-colours some weeks back and similar to you he is adamant that the shirt is basically the o'neills design of the time minus the 3-stripes and the tri-shamrock badge.
The matches you refer to featured on reeling in the years alright and were WC qualifiers. Ireland scored a perfect goal in bulgaria game that was disallowed. they lost game 2-1.
it may have been a badge-variant of that shirt Brady had on, on the programme cover.

stovelid

That badge was always my favourite although I'd love if we just had a simple Shamrock design without the FAI on it, but you can only hope....

bonerm

The thing I don't get is that they appear to have switched from the simple shamrock design to the orange circle crest that TippGunner is interested in (circa 1977-78) then back to the simple shamrock (1978-1984), then to ANOTHER short-lived crest variant for 1985 (see v Switzerland jun1985), then back to the shamrock for a bit, then finally back again to the orange crest (late 1986-1994).

Most of this is before my time of following Ireland but from photographs that seems to be pretty much the case.

Variants
? 1980

Oct 1981

Nov 1982

Sep 1984 ; Feb 1985 ; Mar 1985

Jun 1985 Jun 1985

Oct 1985

Sep 1986 ; Oct 1986 ; May 1987

It's a pity more of these older matches from the 1970s and early 1980s aren't more widely available. It's as tho RTE would have you believe Ireland didn't even have a national team prior to June 1988. That said tho, even the footage I have seen from the period isn't that great anyway (it's as tho the telephoto lens for tv footage didn't even exist back then , so you couldn't even pick out details such as these?).

icdg

The IRFU used a nearly identical crest to the "simple shamrock" version until 1995 or thereabouts when they adopted a stylised version that has only just been replaced. When you look at those older shirts they look more like the rugby ones at first glance rather than the circular logos the FAI were more known for (although the current one is crest-style again).

bonerm

bonerm wrote: »

then finally back again to the orange crest (late 1986-1994).

Actually I just remembered that the crest was changed to this in late 1991 if I'm not mistaken, not 1994 as I stated previously.