Cast your eyes carefully over these sacred garments, kindly brought to our attention courtesy of John Painter, descendant of the great Joe Reader, Albion and England goalkeeper, an FA Cup winner and losing finalist in the 1890s and a man who stood as our last line of defence in 370 senior games.
For these are the robes of state that the great man wore in the course of his career here at the Albion. We believe that he wore them during 1900/01, a monumental campaign given that it was the first that took place in our new home of The Hawthorns after we had vacated Stoney Lane for this curious new out of town development.
The eagle eyed among you will have already noticed a couple of things, most notably that Joe was kitted out in the blue and white stripes, just like his ten colleagues were. This was the normal practice of the time, goalkeepers generally distinguished from the outfield players by virtue of wearing a cap and / or different coloured socks or shorts to the rest of the team. That’s a bit thin as a point of difference all the same, and you can see just why referees were keen to see that practice die out given the difficulties it must have provided in identifying the ‘keeper from the rest of the assembled pack in a penalty box scrimmage.
That said, good West Bromwich man that he was, Joe was always keen to help make the lives of others a little better and so he made himself a bit easier to recognise than the rest of the goalkeeping fraternity. For Joe was the last of the breed to wear long trousers rather than the shorts that the rest of the players, including goalkeepers, now wore.
Looked at logically, it was a pretty sensible move given that he would spend the winter months jumping around on bone hard grounds that did not benefit from the tender care of undersoil heating as they do today. Anything to help lessen the lacerating impact could only be welcomed.
Akin to cricketing flannels in many ways, these “long bags” didn’t seem to impede Reader as he got about his penalty area comfortably enough, earning a reputation as one of the best in the land in the late 19th century, the bedrock of an Albion team that excelled in the FA Cup at the time. Fashionable and effective, let that be the watchword.
The other odd element though is the shirt. For this one bears five navy blue stripes on the front, whereas the few team group pictures that we have from the time suggest that Albion more often employed three broad stripes. These, of course, were days long before kit manufacture was turned into the science we know today and it’s probable that as shirts got ripped and damaged, perhaps beyond repair, they were replaced with whatever the local kit supplier – in this case J & F Wheale Outfitters of West Bromwich – could bring to hand.
It’s all a long, long time ago now…