Melchester Rovers - Colours and Kits

Colours and Kits

Melchester Rovers' colours have always involved some combination of red and yellow, although as with real life professional teams, their precise shirt designs have varied considerably over the years.

When the comic was first introduced, the club played in plain red shirts with yellow sleeves, and navy blue shorts. This strip persisted for many years, until a dramatic new look was introduced in 1973. This involved an all-red strip, with a yellow vertical stripe running down one side of the shirt, one on the other side of the shorts, and a yellow "T"-shape on the socks. In addition, the shirts uniquely featured the players' numbers on one sleeve. This kit was worn until 1981, when Rovers were relegated to the Second Division, and switched back to a more conventional, symmetrical design. This shirt featured yellow bands across the chest, waist and sleeves, and would remain until 1986, when following the drastic rebuilding of the team a fresh new kit was introduced, this time all-red with a narrow yellow stripe running down each side. Then in 1991, a competition was held for Roy of the Rovers readers to design a new kit for the team. The winning entry was a simple and classic combination of yellow and red stripes with red shorts. Variations on this kit (sometimes using more yellow than red) would continue to be used until the end of the weekly comic, and for the duration of the subsequent monthly one. However, when ROTR strips returned in Match of the Day Magazine in 1997, a new kit had been introduced. Unusually, this kit was predominantly yellow, with a large red star motif across the chest and back. This strip did not last long, however, as the following season another strip appeared. This was again all-red, with yellow trim, and a predominant yellow "V" shape across the front and back of the shirt. This was the last kit that Melchester have been seen to play in.

Away strips were not seen very often in the ROTR comic, but three main designs were used, particularly in the 1980s – a plain blue shirt with white shorts and red socks, a yellow shirt with a red stripe running down its side with yellow shorts with a red line running down its other side and an all-white kit that also sometimes employed red socks. After 1992, Rovers away kits would generally be all-white with some combination of yellow and red trim, and in the Match of the Day strips the same design as the home kit, in white and red, was used.

As in real football, shirt sponsorship logos were non existent prior to the 1980s, and when eventually introduced to the strip, their use was intermittent. The first genuine commercial logo, that of Gola appeared on the new kit in 1981 but disappeared the subsequent year. The 1986 kit first appeared with Nike branding, but again this would be removed after one season. The shirts were blank for a while, but in the last couple of years saw the comic's publishers Panini and Fleetway used. When the striped kit was introduced in 1992, meanwhile, it featured Sega as the sponsors. This deal only lasted for a season, however, and for the last season portrayed by the weekly comic TSB appeared on the shirts. This deal carried over to the monthly comic, after which for a short time the shirts were again sponsorless, before a deal with Subbuteo saw that brand appear for the final few issues. The predominantly yellow kit introduced in Match of the Day magazine saw MotD itself as the sponsor, only to be replaced by McDonald's after only two episodes. This latter instance marked perhaps the first time Melchester's shirts made use of appropriate corporate colours!