Colours
| Rosebery colours |
Scotland traditionally wear dark blue shirts with white shorts and dark blue socks, the colours of the Queen's Park team who represented Scotland in the first international. The blue Scotland shirt was earlier used in a February 1872 rugby international, with reports stating that "the scotch were easily distinguishable by their uniform of blue jerseys.... the jerseys having the thistle embroidered". The thistle had previously been worn to represent Scotland in the 1871 rugby international, but on brown shirts. The shirt is embroidered with a crest based upon the lion rampant of the Royal Standard of Scotland. Another style often used by Scotland comprises blue shirts, white shorts and red socks. Change colours vary, but are most commonly white or yellow shirts with blue shorts. From 1994–96 a tartan kit was used. The current version of the crest includes the Scottish flag and a background of thistles, representing the national flower of Scotland, in addition to the lion rampant.
Scotland have not always played in dark blue; on a number of occasions between 1881 and 1951 they played in the primrose and pink racing colours of Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery. A former Prime Minister, Lord Rosebery was an influential figure in Scottish football, serving as honorary President of the Scottish Football Association and Edinburgh team Hearts. His colours were used most frequently in the first decade of the twentieth century, but were discontinued in 1909. The colours were briefly reprised in 1949, and were last used against France in 1951. In 1900, when Scotland defeated England 4–1. Lord Rosebery remarked, "I have never seen my colours so well sported since Ladas won the Derby".
Since 2005, the SFA have supported the use of Scots Gaelic on the national team's strip in recognition of the language's revival in Scotland.
Read more about this topic: Scotland National Football Team
Famous quotes containing the word colours:
“Your wits can’t thicken in that soft moist air, on those white springy roads, in those misty rushes and brown bogs, on those hillsides of granite rocks and magenta heather. You’ve no such colours in the sky, no such lure in the distances, no such sadness in the evenings. Oh the dreaming! the dreaming! the torturing, heart-scalding, never satisfying dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming!”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite: a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.—”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“When we reflect on our past sentiments and affections, our thought is a faithful mirror, and copies its objects truly; but the colours which it employs are faint and dull, in comparison of those in which our original perceptions were clothed.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)