Ever-changing football fashions in the wacky world of sport

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

There was a time when togging out for football wearing different colour boots would have been a sign of abject poverty – or at the very least an indelible source of embarrassment.

You might as well wear your underpants instead of football togs, because this would represent no greater mortification.

And yet if you enjoyed the World Cup ­– and some of us are still suffering withdrawal symptoms – you’ll know that the notion of footballers wearing two boots of different colours is now the coolest thing on earth.

The difference, of course, is that they came that way – not that your mother went looking in the seconds section of some sports shop to find two matching size eights in any style and colour you’d care to imagine.

Indeed there were superstars wearing what could only be described as knitted boots in Brazil – very sophisticated crochet, by all accounts, but knitting nonetheless.

Back in the day, knitted boots were something your maiden aunt made for your new-born baby – but then again Alice bands were for Irish dancers and pony tails were for girls.

Most of us in middle-age can remember the jaw-dropping amazement that greeted Gerry McInerney’s return from an American sojourn with a pair of white boots, which he went on to wear with such distinction in Croke Park in that half-back line of all half-back lines alongside Keady and Finnerty.

It was just as well that the Kinvara man was one of the outstanding hurlers of his generation, because he also matched the white boots with a brown tan and swashbuckling style that wouldn’t have looked out of place if he was playing for Brazil.

He may well have inspired a generation to turn their backs on black boots. And that’s where the problems started.

Because it’s fine to be different if you’re very good but if you stand out because you’re rubbish, it’s not a good idea to underline your incompetence by dressing differently as well.

I can recall that deadliest – in every sense – of full-forwards, Colm O’Rourke of Meath, when he had retired and was dabbling in the world of broadcasting for the first time.

He saw Mayo’s giant midfielder Liam McHale take the field at Croke Park wearing another pair of white boots and Colm – being of older stock – wouldn’t have been more exasperated if this giant had come out wearing a dress.

“Back in my day,” he exclaimed, “you’d love if a fella came out to mark you and he was wearing white boots….”

He didn’t have to say much more, but the clear insinuation was that he was fair game if he was so stupid.

Colm didn’t quite come from the era when boots came over your ankle and looked more like something a miner would wear into the pits with metal studs attached to get you a grip on the grass.

But he might as well have.

Not that the changing fashions of sport stop there either; why, for example, do players wear short sleeved jerseys with body warmers underneath – why not just wear long sleeved shirts from the start?

And then, after a goal, you are treated to sight of a multi-millionaire footballer pulling up his jersey to reveal an off-white vest with a message written in marker by men who could afford to hire the monks who did the calligraphy for the Book of Kells – what’s that all about?

They proclaim in marker that they love their wives, and yet a week later there’s a tabloid tale of them with some glamour model in a hotel room, armed with a phone to provide the photographic evidence, both that they mightn’t love their wives so much after all and they don’t wear vests in real life either.

If we’d known back in the day that the height of football fashion would one day be wearing different coloured boots and vests covered in ink, we’d have been more cutting edge that we’d ever imagined.

Except we’d never earn two hundred grand a week for it.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.