Stripes? Why stripes?

After 151 years our club has finally bowed slightly to that new-fangled democratic malarky and given supporters a say in the design of the shirts we will be expected to rush out and order over the summer in the hope of wearing them in time for the Christmas postponements.  You know.  The sort of thing other clubs have been doing for years.  The great Poppies-supporting public were never trusted to give their opinion when club owners and Chairmen had the opportunity to flick through a sports catalogue and pick a random colour and design, content in the knowledge that they were literally the only person in the club who would NEVER actually wear the final shirt.

The three bland choices the club have given us for next season haven't exactly set pulses racing in this corner of NN16.  Not like the wild "Design a Kit" competition when the Trust hosted the memorabilia exhibition at Kettering museum when kids (and, ahem, older kids) were encouraged to create a Poppies kit from scratch.  Some of those were pretty out-there, and you were left wondering what was being smoked in a number of households.  But, still, it would have been fantastic to have been seen some of the designs made real, adorning an embarrassed looking Henry Eze or a baffled looking Adam Cunnington.

Oh so meh....

No, instead we've been handed a choice of red and black stripes, or red with a bit of black and red with seemingly no black.  Disappointingly, the "traditional" red and black stripes seems to be by far the favourite with the herd-mentality, seal-clapping, Poppies fanbase.  But why?  And why do we consider red and black stripes as our "traditional" kit.

I'm happy to be corrected for this (well, not happy, obviously) but traditionally we have worn red and white with red and black only coming in in the early 1970's.  And for a number of seasons after Big Ron's red and black stripped warriors were a happy memory we reverted to a mixture of red and red and white.  Sometime with a saucy dash of black thrown in - such as the mighty Milas FA cup run shirts of the late 80's.  I'm pretty certain the red and black stripes only made a belated comeback under Mark English's brief but eventful reign.

But, for out-and-out red and black stripery I believe we've probably gone this route for, maybe 15 seasons in our history.  And even then, to my mind, the best stripery kit wasn't even really stripery, but the hoopery kit of several years ago.  Now, THAT was a classic which I'm delighted to continue to model and receive envious glances for on matchdays.  And will continue to do so until it wears out or it shrinks further (!) I doubt anyone will again wear the current horror-show of a shirt an hour after the final whistle of our last game of this season.

It's not that I inherently dislike the red / black combination because I don't.  There are so few teams that use red and black as their colours that it makes us a bit special.  There might be other teams that wear red and black other than us, AC Milan and Bournemouth but I can't think who off the top of my tired head.  It's just, I wish we could be a bit more imaginative with how we deploy the colours.  Red shirts with hooped red and black sleeves?  red shirts with black collar and cuffs?  Red with black side panels?  Red with black pinstripe?  Narrow red and black hoops?  Red and black halves or quarters?  There's so many options ahead of falling back on the red and black stripes.

And why oh why can't we EVER have red and black hooped socks?  Retro or not, I think they'd look dead cool!