.png)
Lillywhites? No Thanks!
Huw Williams provides his weekly look at club events, this time focusing on the nickname.
So we are to be Lillywhites again. We hear that the team's unanimous choice was the all white strip. Perhaps we're going to be renamed Real Hereford. If so, I think we should be told. Apparently that's the reason that Leeds play in all white, having once been blue and yellow: Don Revie wanted to emulate the fabulous Madrid side of the fifties. Changing the shirts was as close as he got.
I digress. Personally I think that the team are the last people who should be consulted. Hardly any of them have any connection with the club that goes back more than two years, so why does their opinion count? Most clubs have a poll of the fans if there's a choice to be made, and I think we should have had the chance to air our views.
I can't say I'm too keen on the change, and I say we should have stayed black and white. It may have been our original colours, but apart from Bill Misery, there can't be very many current fans who have seen them play in all white. United have always been black and white in my time. I even liked the black and white quartered shirts which we sported for a couple of seasons back in the nineties, although I know they weren't popular.
Having said that, they are our team, and we'd support them even if they turned out in pink. Come to think of it, they very nearly did for a while. There was that awful away strip which had red and black diamond shapes all over a white background which gave an overall effect of a grubby pink. Thank god that didn't last.
I hate the whole concept of an away strip as well. When I was a lad (I'm going into moaning old git mode now) clubs had a change strip which they wore when colours clashed, and only then. Why do we turn out in yellow when the opposition play in red, or blue? At least we don't have a third strip as some of the Premier clubs do, which the league allows them to wear a couple of times a season so that they can screw more money out of the faithful punters.
I can cope with this change as long as it doesn't bring back the nickname to go with it. I vaguely remember them being referred to occasionally as Lillywhites back in the mid sixties when I started supporting, but I don't think anyone took it seriously? Let's face it, it's not too inspiring is it? I'm not even sure when we started being referred to regularly as the Bulls - it seems to have developed over the last ten years or so - but that sounds strong, proud, something you can feel good about shouting. But "Come on you Lillywhites?" Forget it.