Oi! That’s our jersey! Claret n Blue Kit conspiracy uncovered

 

Tonight sees the mouth watering clash of Premiership wannabees, Burnley, at home to the big boys from West Ham in the last 16 of the Capital One Cup. However, those in the know are aware that this is in fact a much more significant contest as the clubs vie for the right to be called “the Kings of Claret”. The practice of claret wearing has long fallen into disrepute such that clubs who wish to engage in such clashes have been forced underground even to the hidden depths of the totally ignored ‘other’ cup competition that generally only attracts the energies of clubs reserve team players.

 

      Burnley 2011          /         West Ham 2013

However, tonights tie has become so much more significant amidst rumours that a group of clubs have been secretly swapping jerseys in order to cut down on design costs in this era of annual strips designed to extract even more dosh from today’s cash strapped fans. Having plain run out of ideas ( as evidenced by the awful Hammers away kit for this season) a group of clubs came together to arrange to secretly recycle old kits upon easily duped fans.

Alf - relaxing at home earlier today

Alf Bristlebottom, a private investigator from the Canning town area has blown the lid on this distasteful affair by revealing the extent of the conspiracy: While Villa and West Ham have ‘borrowed’ extensively from eachothers wardrobes, the likes of Burnley and Scunthorpe have received hand me downs when fans of the Premiership outfits have grown tired of their kits. In order to cover their tracks when further recycling the kits, the jerseys have then been sold on to non-leagoe outfit Weymouth FC and also to a host of foreign clubs – Drogheda United and Galway United in the Republic of Ireland and the kits have even been tracked down as far away as Trabzonspor in Turkey!

 

                                                                 Weymouth FC

 

 

                                                                         FC  Trabzonspor

Having revealed the extent of the subterfuge, Alf has realised that UEFA and FIFA are already overwrought with problems of match fixing and racism and has therefore made the generous offer of turning a blind eye upon footballs latest scandalous atrocity in return for a three month subscription to Fortean Times and a carton of fags.

Bristlebottom has laughed off the carefully manufactured lies that occupy the history books and have it that West Ham adopted claret and blue colours in the summer of 1899 when their right-half Charlie Dove received the kit from his father William Dove, who was a professional sprinter of national repute, as well as being involved with the coaching at Thames Ironworks. Dove Sr. had been at a fair in Birmingham, close to Villa Park, and was challenged to a race against four Aston Villa players. Dove defeated them and, when they were unable to pay the bet, one of the Villains who was the kit washer offered a complete set of jerseys to Dove in payment. “Nonsense” Alf has revealed “everybody knows the Brummies are too mean to part with a complete set of jerseys!”

Either way, let’s hope the players don’t get confused by the jerseys tonight and start mistakenly passing to the opposition