Newcastle Falcons, 1996-98
Thirty years on from Newcastle’s sensational 1997/98 Premiership winning season, we take a look at the story of the iconic Adidas shirt that overturned a century-old tradition.
The fairy-tale story of Newcastle Falcons lifting the Premiership trophy at the first attempt is a feat that stands unmatched to this day, their star studded-squad led by director of rugby-player Rob Andrew topping the league by a single point. Having been taken over by Sir John Hall, chairman of Newcastle United Football Club, to become part of his new Newcastle Sporting Club in 1995, the club had experienced an immediate makeover with sweeping changes to their squad, their name, and most interestingly to their playing shirts.
“The club was founded by a group of former Durham School boys as Gosforth Football Club in 1877,” says club archivist Kingsley Hyland. “At the time, Durham School played in green and white hoops. So rather than buy a new set of shirts the club decided to play in green and white hooped shirts, white shorts and green and white socks. It was even written into the clubs constitution that the club's colours would be green and white. However, somebody at some stage had slipped in the word predominantly.”
This detail would prove significant in the years to come. After a decade of decline in the 1980s the opportunity presented by their move to Kingston Park in 1990 prompted the club to modernise, adding ‘Newcastle’ to their name to encourage local businesses to provide sponsorship. However, three seasons later, that hope of investment had yet to be fulfilled.
“People started talking about the club colours,” explains Kingsley. “It was suggested that we might do better if we went to black and white, like the football club.” However, this caused an uproar. “There was massive resistance to that. The club members thought it was sacrilege to change the club's colours. People were saying: ‘No, no, we've always been green and white. We can't change, our constitution doesn't let us’.
“But then, somebody identified this word predominantly. So a design was come up with that had three colours as hoops, green, black and white, but as there was a green and white hoop to every black hoop the shirt was still predominantly in the clubs colours.”
But this change proved to be the start of a gradual assimilation to the familiar black and white. With rugby in the exhilarating early days of professionalism, one of the first changes Hall made was to negotiate a lucrative kit supply contract with Adidas.
“A new shirt was designed for 1995/96, which was predominantly green but with broad black hoops with the three white Adidas stripes against that. However, because the club was now a limited company they didn’t need a constitution anymore, so it was a small step to convert that design to a white and black shirt at the start of the 1996/97 season.”
Further assimilation came a change to the club crest. From the date of the Adidas deal, the badges became identical to that of Newcastle United Football Club save for the fact that instead of a seahorse, there was a falcon on either side. “It was entirely from a marketing perspective” says Kingsley. “At that time St James’ Park had ten thousand on the waiting list, and that was a huge new audience the club wanted to tap into.”
“The members struggled to adapt to all the changes. For years you would still get crowds shouting encouragement, not come on Newcastle or come on Falcons, it was still come on Gos! However, the enlightened ones among us knew this was our one shot at salvation”.
As a hundred years of Gosforth green was brought to a close, the club emerged in 1996 not just with new colours but also a new name. Now Newcastle Falcons, their first ever black and white strip was donned by the likes of Tim Stimpson, Tony Underwood, John Bentley and Dean Ryan as the club stormed Division Two to win promotion. The strip was retained for the following season, joined by their clubs first ever away strip, as the club sealed the Premiership title.
