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When We Wore Blue

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t’s not known when Northern Ireland, or Ireland as they were then referred to, first wore blue.

What’s certain is that in our earliest days, we wore a number of different colours, including blue, white and, even on occasions, green. However, by the time that international football returned after World War One, blue was our established shirt colour and remained so until 1931. In 1931, the shirt colour was changed to green and the rest is history.

So how come we wore blue in the first place, an early example of Linfield influence in the IFA? Maybe so, but blue has been the national colour of Ireland since the 12th century. The Normans used the 'Colour of Leinster' to signify the whole island.

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Don’t know if the blue shirts improved our performances on the pitch or not. Certainly we had some good players who wore it - including Billy Gillespie, Joe Bambrick & Gerry Morgan who, as a Catholic (contrary to Keane’s recent claims) captained Linfield to their 7 trophy success in 1922.
The period until 1931 saw some memorable matches also, including a 7- 0 victory over Wales at Celtic Park, Belfast in 1930 (with Bambrick scoring 6) and, in 1927, our most recent home victory over England.

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Why the change from blue to green in 1931? The official reason at the time was that, due to Scotland’s navy, they were forced to wear white shirts in games against us. Back then, this would have represented one-third of their games so their grievance was maybe understandable (though they should have been grateful to get away with white - back in the early 1900s, their first choice colours were yellow and primrose hoops but that’s another story for another day).

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Probably as influential, though never quoted as an official reason, was the off-the field contest between the IFA and the Free State side to be recognised as the ‘true’ national side of Ireland (up until the 1940s, both associations were selecting players from across the island - though come to think about it, the FAI still are). The Free State had been recognised by FIFA as from 1923 and by the late 1920s, they had already participated in the Olympic Games (prior to the 1930 World Cup, the highest profile international tournament) and had played against established international sides including Italy, Hungary and Belgium.