Category Archives: Soccer

Detroit City FC, Flags, Symbols, and Crests, Kits, Soccer

The Kit Post 2023

Hello and welcome all to the ninth annual Detroit City FC kit post! Whether you’re new to Detroit City or new to this site, each year I do a run down of the previous Detroit City FC season, review the out-going kits the club wore, and I mock up three potential kits for the upcoming season – home, away, and a clash/charity kit.

Here are the links to the previous kit posts:

2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022

There are probably people, mostly people whose personalities are born and bred on the birdsite, who will consider 2022 a not great year for Detroit City. Whether for the impact USL-C had on the club and supporter culture, for the growing pains that popped up throughout the year, the bitter cold of those first handful of games, or for the “disappointing” (heavy emphasis on the quotes) result.

I must attest that, at least on the pitch, I was extremely satisfied with the product and the results the club put out. Moving from NISA to USL-C was a move up in more ways than one, and I was expecting a season where we attempt to not be embarrassed more than actually attempt to win. However, the NISA All-Stars put out quality games. Sure, we didn’t make a deep run into the playoffs, but back in March I wasn’t expecting to make it to the playoffs at all. So that’s a massive success already, and it means that the club has a strong foundation to build off of.

The next few years are going to be so exciting for Detroit City. I can see us really becoming a power house over the next few years, especially with the right signings and coaching. We’re so close. We can do this.

Meanwhile, a lot of controversy was going on off the pitch – mostly in the stands. I will not comment on every event, first because it’s not the point of this blog, second because I don’t remember them all, and third – I don’t want to come off as an authority. Generally though, my opinions run from unhappy and rebellious to unhappy but pragmatic.

Personally, I think my time in the midst of all the smoke and the pounding of drums might be reaching its conclusion and thus so too my pontificating on the matter. Perhaps I am getting bougier, perhaps I am getting older. It is very likely that it’s a combination of those things, but also a subtle shift in what I want out of the game day experience. The Niamh of 2023 is quite different than the person who was going in 2012. Less is the need for tribal belonging and aggressive venting, and in its place a need to be seen, to enjoy, to exist outside of my home office, to have my cocktails and catch up with friends and perhaps throw eyes at potential new friends.

Starting next year, I will be in the VIP section more than not. I basically consider it pre-paying for about $300 of drinks and food, which I do regularly get each game. My plan as of writing (October of 2022) is to coëxist both in the stands and the VIP section, but generally, I expect to make those retreats when needed.

But what about the kits?” you might be asking. “I’m here for the kits” to which I might reply, “Oh! Kits! You said Kits. Sorry, I misheard you. I thought you said- you know? Never mind.”

The 2022 Detroit City kits will always be the kits from our first USL-C season, which in-and-of-itself is a big deal. Potentially that is enough to make them something special, though I am hesitant to go all-in on that idea. Looking back to the 2020 kits, those aren’t exactly the most memorable set, but there was a lot going on in 2020 that might’ve prevented them from solidifying in my mind.

Detroit City donned four kits across 2022 – home, away, and two charity kit designs (one for the women and one for the men) and from those four it’s hard to pick a “best” in the worst possible way. It will have to fall to either the home or away because… sublimation, but outside that I think all four kits are less than great.

The home kits – all rouge with a rouge-colored sash was an interesting choice for a follow up to one of the best DCFC kits of all time. I like the sash as an element, but I think these kits fall into a serious uncanny valley of being needlessly complicated? I never really thought of the two-tone kit this year as anything other than just solid rouge, if that makes sense. I think the lacking piece was the Adidas piping being the same color as everything else. You might as well have deleted the piping and left them as is. The sash never popped in such a way to stand out. Even my wiki kit mockup was pretty plain, and we all know I hate plain. In that way, the 2020 and 2022 home kits share a bit in common – I forget that they had anything going on at all.

I think, on paper, the 2022 away kits would’ve made more sense if the home kit had been stronger. I just legitimately have zero attachment to the away kit at all. The design elements make sense, but again, there’s not much going on. Had the home kits had more, been better, the away kits would’ve snapped into sharp focus. They definitely meet the definition of “clean” I constantly bandy about on this site, but… I don’t know, they just didn’t mean much to me. Maybe it was the lack of trophies? Maybe there was a malaise over the entire season, coming out of the libertarian madness of NISA and into the corporate mundanity of USL-C that just subtracts from these two kits. Maybe if we won more. Maybe if we lifted more trophies. Maybe if something these kits would’ve magically worked. Inevitably the kits both define and are defined by the season. A great season can bring great meaning to a kit. But a great kit can make a mediocre season memorable. And that’s the problem. We had a good season, we broke expectations in mediocre kits, and that leaves them both unmemorable.

Lastly, and leastly, the charity kits. I hated both of them? They were awful, cacophonous messes of sublimation. I’m stoked we raised money for great causes, I’m so happy we got to do good with them – just wish we had looked good in the meantime. I assume this signals a trend – the custom Admiral kits for charity and the Adidas kits for the “main” kits. Part of me wishes we’d return to a special kit for the charity, still Adidas, but just a little bit more off the beaten path. I wish we’d consider another go like 2019 with a full third kit. We’ve shown that we can do stuff like auctioning off normal kits. But as we get bigger and are able to get more out of Adidas, maybe that won’t be the case. Perhaps we’re nearly at the point of considering another supplier.

Perhaps I am overusing “perhaps” in this post.

We live in a time of uncertainty. A time of ‘perhaps’ when we need certain answers.

I have no certain answers for you, dear reader, only thoughts and conjecture. I read the tarot of the kits. Some things are clearer than others. However; somethings are obvious:

  • I don’t work for the DCFC front office
  • The DCFC front office fucks with me
  • Kits shown here are not official direction
  • Logos, league, and sponsors are used without permission
  • Sponsors and league are not official nor necessarily endorsed by our front office
    • I refuse to include the Chevy logo on my work, deal with it
  • The reality of 2023 might be very different than what I predict here

The Home Kit

The 2023 Home Kit Prediction – Rouge with horizontal pinstripes and gold trim

I went through a lot of iterations on my home and away kits this year, slowly honing in on something that worked for me. Like the club, I usually alternate between years with a lot going on and years without so much. Last year for the home kit, we had the hoops, this year pinstripes.

The 2021 Kits were something amazing, and I want to build off that more. Some clubs are defined by features as much as colors (e.g. Celtic and green/white hoops, Newcastle and black/white stripes), but Detroit City isn’t one of those clubs. We can have hoops, sashes, pinstripes, nothing at all so long as the kits are that lovely, rich rouge color. Making the gold trim something that all home kits have going forward would be amazing, and draw a serious line of continuity even as features come and go. I’m not sure if I want to see bigger gold features, for example, a gold sash, but I’d at least be interested in seeing it.

This is what I mean by the difficulty of designing a home kit. I can’t imagine having these difficult discussions regarding the away kit. Want a gold sash? Done. Want a rouge band? Done. There’s no problem there. But when you talk about making a serious change to the home kit there’s a hesitation I feel in my gut. Will this be something that adds to the history of Detroit City kits? Or subtracts from it? I’ve done mockups with, for example, gold hoops and I cannot help but feel that it’s not a Detroit City home kit. A training top or a one-off charity kit, but it’s not a home kit.

So perhaps this is a “safe” design. Clean and simple. Three tones of rouge (the base, the lighter piping on the shorts and hems, and the darker stripes), but I think it is a strong design balancing everything I’ve talked about above.

The Away Kit

The 2023 Away Kit Prediction – White with a rouge and gold chevron

Working on the away kit is always a ton of fun, and I often get caught up in making dozens of potential designs, many just iterating on one strong design, drilling it down to something amazing. In previous posts, I’ve talked about wanting to do an homage to the 2013 kits with the rouge band across the chest. The 2013 away kit was the first DCFC kit I’ve ever bought, and I absolutely love it. It’s a fun kit with a variety of elements: the white body, the rouge band, the champagne sleeves.

Here I went to a sort of parallel homage – substituting a multi-colored chevron for the rouge band. Sure the sleeves are still white, but the champagne is captured in the piping and the chevron. Rouge piping on the shirt hems and on the shorts with a little two-tone going on in the collar.

Part of me wants to start a completely alternative discussion to the one above? Is it time to consider having a bit more fun with our away kits? White makes up the majority of our away kits despite us being the rouge and gold, so my gut is thinking do we move more permanently to champagne? Or do we let go all together? Can Detroit City pull off an orange away kit? Or a purple one? I Legitimately don’t know. Something about having both home and away kits fit the club’s color profile is uniquely American to me, a carry over from gridiron. But maybe that’s not actually the case, maybe I just don’t know because I’m used to clubs in the EPL having a very solid home design and the away kit having a bit more variation. Newcastle United has shown this over the years.

But what I do want to reiterate is what I said above – you gotta have at least one kit knock it out of the park, and I feel like the 2022 Detroit City kits didn’t provide. So for 2023 we need a strong slate of kits. Which brings us to my favorite kit to work on…

The Clash/Alternative Kit

The 2023 Clash Kit Prediction – Black with rouge sleeves and socks

The clash was the third of the three kits I started on and the second I came to a final decision on. It started with black and pastel pink. But as I played around with the options and variations, I really couldn’t shake the Inter Miami vibes, which was extremely disappointing. When I eventually moved on to the black/rouge combination.

I wanted a look that would be instantly iconic. I think I hit the bull’s eye with this design. We’ve seen some black and gold kits but something I’d like to see is black and rouge. When the two colors are so close together, you’re going to have to take steps to really emphasize them, so here, instead of just piping or some small features, I went with the sleeves and the socks. The more heavily contrasting gold comes in as piping on the shorts, in the collar and sleeves, and the hem of the top.

This sort of design, one that fits in with the rest of the options is perfect for an alternative or clash design, not just a a charity match or two.

There are some kits that years later folks still talk and think about, those ones that made bold choices and stuck to them. I think the black and gold third kits really embody that, or for another example, the Kitman Moy kits from the same year. I don’t think we’ve had a design since that really bucks the convention and gets not just talked about, but used. I might sound a little curmudgeonly here – but I’m fucking sick of the one-off sublimated kits. I really am. Let’s see something with some meat.

Three amazing kits, I think! There’s a lot that makes them different, there’s even more that ties them together!

The Sketches

The sketches for this year’s trio of kits.

Despite the ending in Memphis, 2022 was an extremely memorable year for Detroit City FC. Our first season in the USL-C, our first playoff spot, our first playoff loss. I for one certainly did not see it coming, though I dared to hope. I dared to hope quite a bit through the 2022 season – whether it was a playoff hosting spot or even just a playoff spot at all. The club and the staff really rose to the occasion on the pitch and despite growing pains off the pitch, I think we saw a lot of progress and improvements.

As my time as a “hooligan” comes to a close, my involvement with the club only grows. First with the 2022 Prideraiser campaign, which many of you contributed to and made a massive success. And now as a member of the Fan Advisory Board. I hope to continue to support and represent all fans, but especially queer fans, as the club continues to grow.

I have high hopes for 2023.

Hit me up on Twitter or Mastodon with your thoughts about 2022 and 2023, what did you think of the kits in particular and what would you put Detroit in for the upcoming season? If anyone wants to commission me, I have a portfolio and pricing page on this site. Feel free to drop a line.

Cheers, everyone!

Background Photo Credit:
Photo 75098233 © Jesse Kunerth | Dreamstime.com

Detroit, Detroit City FC, Life, Michigan, Soccer

Ten Years of Detroit City

I don’t know how long this post is going to be. Originally I thought I’d do it as a twitter thread, but I actually have an app that limits how much time I can spend on that hellsite.

Detroit City kicks off its first game in the second tier of American soccer in roughly two hours as I finish this up. Founded in 2012, Detroit City has consistently pushed what it meant to be a community-led capital-C Club, one invested in the community, not one invested into by the ultra-wealthy as a form of bread and circuses. Owing the idea of a “zeroth” anniversary, this is actually our eleventh season, but a decade of City is worth talking about.

It’s particularly worth talking about for me because I have built a weird parallel with Detroit City since the first season. I graduated on an off semester from Purdue University at the very end of 2011 and soon after got a job that moved me to Detroit working on the edges of the automotive industry. My first day at work, if I recall correctly, was the 28th of January, 2012, months before Detroit City kicked off.

I found Detroit City searching for MLS in Detroit, as I had read that there was interest in bringing a club here at the time. At Purdue I mostly just followed EPL and when I didn’t it was because I was following Newcastle down into the Championship. My roommate had an MLS team, Chicago, and I vaguely followed the Seattle Sounders because as an aerospace engineer, I assumed I’d be moving to Seattle sooner than later.

My first game was the 16th of June, 2012. According to Detroit City historian Michael Kitchen, that was a three to nil win over FC Buffalo. I have two pictures from that game, one taken by Brigid of my friend Zak and I. We showed up with some shoddy flags and custom t-shirts, driven by my own need to recreate what I had seen elsewhere. To build.

It’s not quite ten years later. But it’s getting there. Brigid and Zak didn’t catch the bug the way I did. I started going to games alone, which for an extrovert like me means I started talking to people, which meant I soon got caught up in the nascent Northern Guard Supporters.

City means something in particular to me because it has become so intertwined with me over the last ten years. I’ve been to secret meetings. Sold Darren McCarty a scarf after drinking a pint of whiskey. Met countless people from all over the world. Carried a drunken footballer out of a bathroom. Invested in two major campaigns to grow the club. Lit more smoke bombs than I think most people ever even see. Traveled to states I wouldn’t’ve otherwise. My first tattoo was for Detroit City. And City got me interested in playing, so much so I helped re-found a beer-league team that is playing an international friendly in a little more than a week!

Detroit City has impacted a lot of who I am, is what I am saying. And the big this is that the community around City has greatly enabled the biggest change of my life.

A man pushes over a small domino labeled "read a wikipedia article on MLS expansion" that will eventually topple a very large domino labeled "come out as trans with a ton of supportive friends".

I’ve talked at length about being trans, I’m not going to rehash too much of that here, but as the meme says, there is a direct line between fatefully looking up MLS expansion on wikipedia to searching on google to learn more about potential teams and finding Detroit City to joining the NGS, to meeting amazing people and building a support structure, to getting involved with more LGBT+ folks, to eventually my coming out as trans back in 2020.

Isn’t that crazy? Like if I were to go back in time and be able to pull ten years younger me aside and point out onto the pitch and up at the smoke and go “That. That is what enables you to finally come out.” I don’t think twenty-three year old me would’ve been able to grasp it, even fully understand the enormity and the utter correctness of that statement.

Detroit City means a lot to a lot of people, and like a fractal faceted diamond, it reflects and refracts all of us at once, and the sparkles dance in our eyes forever. Over the next few months and years and decades I expect we’ll see a lot of emotional posts like this. Of people who found City because of some cheap tickets or a quick blurb in ESPN and in doing so find a life-changing community. They, like me, will find themselves swept up in something amazing.

Here’s to many, many more years of Detroit City Football Club!

Detroit City FC, Flags, Symbols, and Crests, Kits, Soccer

The Kit Post 2022

Welcome, welcome to my eighth annual Detroit City FC kit post. For those new to the site, new to Detroit City, or both, let me give you a quick idea of what this yearly even is about: when a Detroit City kit reaches the end of its life, usually at the end of a season, but sometimes at the end of the year (this time it’s both), I do a review of the out-going kits and design a set (home, away, third) of new kits for the upcoming year/season.

If you need a handy guide to my previous updates, here you go!

2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021

2021 was an amazing year for Detroit City, quite possibly the best since the inception. An utterly dominant season that technically started in the fall of 2020, Detroit City won everything that we could. We were so dominant that to keep up appearances and competition, buys and spots in the finals were consistently given to a number of teams with a growing number of asterisks behind their names.

I helpfully updated this graphic for NISA when they tried to hand-wave away that every possible path to the Championship had actually been seized by Detroit City. But I don’t think the league appreciated my efforts.

In the end, though, City saw it all the way through to the end, beating LA Force and gaining that fabled star over the crest. It was an emotional moment for all of us, but for the team it was the plateau that would hold through the end of 2021, when we won our third consecutive NISA “season”-thingy.

It really is hard to emphasize how much of a powerhouse Detroit had become, and instead of the tide lifting all ships, things seemed to get worse. Bad teams just upped the chippiness and physicality, taking advantage of NISA’s unpaid refs and willingness to let red cards just be forgiven with no real fall-out. With all that in mind, it’s not surprising that Detroit City chose to fauxmote to the USL Championship, a move that is rather fraught, so let’s start there (because this really is as much as season retrospective as it is a kit post, despite the title).

My thoughts are mixed to say the least, when it comes to this move. USL has long been a bogey in the dark, looming over Detroit City since our early days and the on-and-off proxy battles with Dan Duggan and the Michigan (now Flint) Bucks. Their model, especially in 2013 and 2014 was MLS but not as good, going as far to act as an MLS stand-in during these battles.

The closed system. The high fees to enter. The countless MLS 2 teams. USL was not where anyone wanted to see Detroit City, and I assume there are folks who continue to not want to see us there, and I won’t fault them that.

While Sean Mann has assured us that our IP is safe and that the gameday experience will almost certainly not change, the latter still needs to be proven, and I’d bet many people will remain apprehensive until the end of time, because if anything, the USL has proven to be as fickle with rule enforcement as NISA has. Lastly, when talking about USL, is how did we afford it to begin with. Word is an angel investor stepped in, one who wishes to remain anonymous, but I don’t think that soothes anyone’s minds. Really, it only bristles us more. So now we have a league that could, at any time, step in and fuck with how we do things and an anonymous owner who could step in at any time and fuck with how we do things – either through direct action or inaction.

On the other hand, we had clearly outgrown NISA and all the worrying warts that made us sigh or roll our eyes aren’t as forgivable two years into the experience, especially given the arbitrariness of them. COVID doesn’t stop NISA from living up to its own rules and its own disclosed values, but shitty league owners do. NISA is “independent” but independent seems to have less to do with not fucking with teams and fans (which NISA is happy to do) and more like “letting certain owners get away with whatever they want so long as they throw a big enough fit”. Plus vetting is apparently non-existent as a number of vaporware teams appear in equal standing with Detroit City, threatening to water it all down for us.

Sure, for many of us NISA was the equivalent of the Titanic in the vicinity of Liverpool circa 1912 – but we’re not in Liverpool anymore, we’re off the coast of Newfoundland and given the choice of staying on the Titanic or jumping over to the Carpathia, some of us see the choice as easier than others.

Does it make hypocrites of all of us?

Unpopular answer – yeah, yeah it does. But you roll with the punches knowing that’s the only thing folks got on you and keep on supporting.

Luckily for me, the kits are a much easier topic to tackle. I absolutely loved both of our primary kits. I especially loved that the squad itself grew so attached to the away kit they were requesting to wear it for big matches and the championships. They couldn’t’ve have picked a better kit to win trophies in, except for maybe the home one. But that’s just me.

The home kits were a perfect example of a clean kit – a phrase that I’ve used in contrast to a plain kit quite a bit on this site. Like pornography and art, sometimes you need to see it to know the difference. A plain kit comes off the rack, or does nothing to look like it didn’t. Whereas our home kits used the gold adidas striping to frame the otherwise “plain” shirt, giving it an extremely intentional and professional look. The gold trim is something I had wanted to see for quite some time, I hope we stick to it. While the all-rouge or rouge-on-rouge-on-rouge kits are okay, I’d rather keep that for elements like hoops or stripes while the gold details can be kept.

Meanwhile, the away kits were absolutely gorgeous. Gold bodies with white sleeves, gold trim on the sleeves and shorts kept them unified with the home kit. And boy did those kits get plastered everywhere on the media. Every time we needed to lift a trophy, there they were. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few new comers who didn’t wonder if we were really Le Champagne. A little-noted feature of all three kits that I adored was that the crest changed to match the kit it was on – rouge and gold for the home, champagne and white for the away, black and grey for the charity kit.

And while we’re on the charity kit – they never grew on me, quite the opposite really. Intricate, sublimated designs aren’t my thing. Plus it required us to use Admiral kits which probably meant that more could go to the Give Merit charity, but eh. I don’t like kits as picture canvases and prefer that designs stick to the old limitations even as everything becomes sublimated now.

Anyway, my usual list of disclaimers, which I’m just copy-pasting from last year because why the fuck not?

  • I don’t work for the DCFC front office
  • The DCFC front office fucks with me
  • Kits shown here are not official direction
  • Logos, league, and sponsors are used without permission
  • Sponsors and league are not official nor necessarily endorsed by our front office
    • I refuse to include the Chevy logo on my work, deal with it
  • The reality of 2022 might be very different than what I predict here, I love the challenge regardless

Before we got to the designs, I want to talk briefly on process, because I often touch upon it when writing these posts anyway. Since I am a stickler for very traditional designs, I often “sketch” kits in wikipedia format before scaling them up. I mentioned this forever ago in a post about working on the first Harper’s kits. Recently, I made a photoshop template for free-hand sketching wiki kits, so I don’t have to rely on the finicky template system, instead allowing me to potentially churn out dozens of designs with little or no trouble.

And as of late, that’s where I’ve been starting for bigger projects like this. Getting my thoughts out and on a piece of digital paper allows me to test things out, or get a better grip on the reality of what I’m thinking. Some designs die here because their flaws become obvious or seeing them for real makes me aware that they don’t really look like a Detroit City FC kit.

I’ve been finding this process to really help, especially when it comes to broadening my designs, proper framing, and getting ideas out and on the page without committing too much energy to them. That’s the best thing – the experimentation. Since I’m working in a tiny format with barely any resolution, I can sketch an idea, see it sucks, and move on all in like three minutes, instead of thirty. It means I don’t rely on crutches as much, even though, a favorite of mine is about to appear again.

This year one of the designs to not make it was a throwback to the 2013 kits, with the rouge stripe through the chest on the away kit. I was conceptualizing what a “better” version of that would look like. It just never worked and I knew it wasn’t working without feeling committed to the design. I moved on to another idea I had and it looked much, much better. So that’s what you’ll see here.

And with all that out of the way, let’s see some kits!

The Home Kit

The 2022 Home Kit Prediction – Hoops with gold trim

I’ve often said that the home kit can be hardest, though perhaps the better word is it can be more daunting. There’s a lot of focus on getting the home kit right and folks can be much more picky about what is and isn’t on it. This year I wanted to return to a focus on kits that can be produced by a company like Adidas, after a few years of allowing some slips into the sublimated hell that is dominating US kits right now.

After such a stellar year, I wanted to go back to a reoccurring Detroit City kit – the rouge on rouge hoops. City has worn hooped kits twice before: 2014 and 2017. Of the two, I think the 2017 did it better, and not just because it was Adidas over Nike. The darker “base” with the lighter “hoops” just looked overall better to me, and I wanted to follow up on that. I also wanted to keep the gold framing – we are rouge and gold after all. Having both colors on the kit at once is a good nod to that. I kept it cohesive with little light rouge touches in the shorts, using an extra little line to break up the vertical stripes and at the hem of the shirt, which gives good definition to the overall makeup of the kit.

The Away Kit

The 2022 Away Kit Prediction – Half-and-half champagne and white

Champagne is a difficult color to work with, admittedly. Generally, it doesn’t come out looking like “gold” so much as sandy tan, while “gold” is usually just a highly saturated yellow (think the Packers). Such is the disconnect when working with a color named after a shiny metal. The alternative, for Detroit City, would be white, which is our usual away kit color. Personally? I prefer the champagne, I think it looks better, it’s not a common color for kits, and again, we are the Rouge and Gold, so it’s nice to stick to that.

But as in many things in life, it can sometimes be important to compromise. Gold? White? Why not both. And thus we arrive at a staple design that rarely makes its way to the United States – the half-and-half. Here I’m working with a base of champagne, with the right half of the kit colored white. The sleeves are both champagne, as they are often a separate “item” to be colored on sites like Adidas, with no option to split them. Like the home kit, I wanted to showcase both colors, and so here I use rouge as the framing color in the cuffs and the stripes. And bucking previous trends, I went with the champagne socks – something unseen since 2012.

The Clash/Alternate Kit

The 2022 Clash Kit Prediction – Verdigris

The template I work with is admittedly not that impressive, but it is cheap and it does work for someone who is more of a spirited amateur than a professional. A few years ago I turned off the layers that are intended to add the photorealistic shading and texturing to the kits, in favor of this more cartoony/sketch look. One of the downsides to that was when you made clean kits it effectively came out looking like a romper, with nothing dividing the shirt from the shorts. But this is an actual design concern and this year I wanted to address it with the hem at the bottom of the kit.

Verdigris, the color of oxidized copper, has been a popular recommendation when I seek them out. The Spirit of Detroit, the statue that is at the heart of our crest, is in person a large copper statue and is, in fact, verdigris. It goes without saying, then, that this would be a fantastic choice for an alternate kit, though I think the color would be hard to do in reality. I used gold and black to frame the kit, leaving it otherwise unblemished by design elements. The sleeves have some vertical elements that I saw in my head as going partway around the sleeve, so it wouldn’t just be the ones visible.

The Sketches

The wikified sketches I did before kicking off proper renders.

I mentioned above that I use tiny wiki-sketches to get my ideas down on paper first, so I wanted to include the actual sketches at the bottom of this post. There are some differences for sure – for example the solid bar gold tops of the rouge kit wandered over to the clash. Part of that was just about look. The verdigris kit also had a slightly different collar look, with the gold not completely surrounding the neck, but I just couldn’t get it to look right in the render, so it was dropped. Otherwise, I think I stayed pretty true to the original sketches, and they look amazing in miniature, if I do say so myself.

A fine trio of kits!

So that’s that for the 2021-wrap up and the 2022 kit post. As you can see by the sorry state of my site, I don’t really post much to it but this annual shindig, but hey – what can you do? 2021 was a hell year, just like 2020 and there wasn’t much for it.

As always, if you’re interested in commissioning me, you can check out my portfolio/commissions page for what to expect. Have a lovely holiday everyone, and I hope to have more stuff to put on this site eventually other than just “I’m trans” and “I love kits”, but honestly, that’s probably all it’ll be for a while!

Cheers!

Background Photo Credit:
Photo 75098233 © Jesse Kunerth | Dreamstime.com

Detroit City FC, Flags, Symbols, and Crests, Kits, Soccer

The Kit Post 2021

To be honest, I actually though I had until this summer to work on this post, which I usually do as a wrap up to the previous season, but noooo~ we’re going to do a mid-season kit change. So here it is fuckers, the kit post twenty-twenty-one

For those new to the site: HI! I mostly post about sports and kits, sorrrrrrry! If it helps I do have something in the works combining kits and trans that will happen eventuallytm. At the wrap up of a Detroit City FC season kit’s lifespan, I do a little write up about the last set, things I guessed wrong or right, and then come up with three new kits (home, away, alt) to get everyone excited for the unveiling of the upcoming kits.

If you want to check out any previous Kit Post, here’s a handy guide:

2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020

So in last year’s post I went a little off the beaten path and came up with some designs that were a little different both for Detroit City and for myself. I went with heavily sublimated kits in the vein of Inaria or Icarus with details across the actual bodies of the kits that would require some level of customization on the part of the manufacturer.

I think I was closest with the away kits, in which I predicted a white with rouge hooped kit and off-colored socks, and while literally none of that happened, the actual away kit was white with rouge pinstripes and has very much grown on me over the last year. It is, in fact, the 2020 kit that I own, as I rarely buy more than one. It was in the white kits that Le Rouge dominated the Fall Championship, and in those kits we hoisted the cup, which given the climate of 2020, was an amazing and cathartic thing to see. I, for one, will always associate the image of Stephen Carroll pouring an entire can of Stroh’s into his mouth with the Fall trophy with 2020. Victory in the face of adversity, celebration in the face of uncertainty will always be 2020 to me.

The home kits, however, were frustrating to me, visually, the pin stripes so small as to be effectively invisible from far away, yet so painfully obvious when up close, ruining an otherwise crisp kit. They didn’t do it for me, I guess, and this is obviously a quite subjective take. I think it was particularly rough following the very popular 2019 design, which was very, very clean and of course also came with a lot of baggage and trophies. Somehow, though, I don’t feel like I’m missing out not seeing another trophy or three lifted in that particular design.

And there were no alternative kits last cycle, thanks in no small part to COVID. So Nothing to say here.

Anyway, my usual list of disclaimers, which I’m just copy-pasting from last year because why the fuck not?

  • I don’t work for the DCFC front office
  • The DCFC front office fucks with me
  • Kits shown here are not official direction
  • Logos, league, and sponsors are used without permission
  • Sponsors and league are not official or necessarily endorsed by our front office
  • The reality of 2021 might be very different than what I predict here, I love the challenge regardless

I am pleased that so far Detroit City has resisted the temptation of highly sublimated kits, and happy that they’ve stuck with Adidas. We shall see if that continues (I suspect it will given the respectability and reverence for the brand). Say what you will, getting good kits from Adidas just has a certain something to it, it elevates Detroit City, and that’s not worth nothing, especially when you’re talking about charging $80+ for a soccer kit.

Assuming we stick with Adidas, we can actually have some potential throwbacks to our 2013 kits, though maybe those should wait for 2023, then? I sketched them up in October of last year. It’d also be really cool for 2022 being our tenth anniversary or even this year being our tenth season to see the club release a poster with all the kits so far made by Dave at Historical Kits. That would be a legitimate instant grab for me.

Anyway, we’re about 700 words into this beast, so why don’t we move on and get to the goods? Here are my designs for the 2021 Detroit City FC kits!

The Home Kit

After a couple years of more complicated designs, I wanted to get back to something simpler this year, and that’s the theme of this trio – clean. Clean is a hard thing to describe. Clean to one person is plain to another, and plain is bad, it’s boring. So how does one design for clean while avoiding plain? Well, that’s really hard to say. For me, plain kits have no details, and they elicit little emotional investment. Small details, like the gold cuff stripes on the shirt and shirts, the fleurs de lis on the socks mirrored onto the shirt and shorts in small ways to me builds a cohesive whole.

For the home kit, I went with an old-school design that will be familiar to fans (and enemies) of teams like Arsenal and Ajax. The core of the kit is a darker, more purpley rouge, with the outside being brighter. The cuffs and the collar are the darkest, giving a boarder to it all, and of course small golden lines throughout make it cohesive. I always suspect my home kits will be the most divisive, and that’s no different here.

The Away Kit

I really liked the gold and black kits from my 2020 set, and I started with that here. You might notice the same Adidas stripes turning into a colored inset in the pits and on the sleeves. But I wanted to walk away from the black because this is the away kit, which needs to get tied more strongly in with the over-all colors of the club. So here I went with rouge as was the case for the 2017 kits. Detroit City’s first away kits were gold, and they’ve popped up here and there, but gold is a difficult color to work with in manufacturing. In the end you are effectively left with two choices: sand or yellow? In the past, Detroit City has gone the route of sand, avoiding the garish yellows of teams like the Green Bay Packers.

When designing these, it felt very subtractive, which is an unfortunate feeling. I was removing features rather than adding them and here I was having trouble finding a place to add anything of note. I did bring back the fleurs from the home kit, this time only on the shirt, as I have let the shorts remain more clean, letting the white dominate. It is easy to overpower white, especially in the shorts. And I wrapped it up with tow-tone rouge turn-overs on the socks.

The Clash/Alternative Kit

This one is by far and away my favorite of this year. I took a lot of inspiration from the popularity of the 2019 alternate kits, a keepers kit that appeared like exactly once as far as I am aware, and FC St. Pauli. When you have the word “Ally” written across the chest of every kit, it was hard not to want to lean into that in more ways than one. This kit probably took the longest, had a very strange evolution, and was workshopped a bit more than the away kit and far, far more than the home (I rarely workship home kits).

Pink and black are an amazing combo, it’s hard to do wrong, if I’m honest, and that’s good because there might be some fun stuff with Harper’s dropping soon that I’m very excited for. This kit was the hardest when it came to balancing clean and plain, or clean and over designed. Especially when you introduce the pride flag into things, you have a lot of colors competing for attention, which is why reducing them to thin stripes ended being just what the doctor ordered. Originally, for example, the whole cuff was a pride flag, which then makes the sleeves look busy, which then makes the shirt look paradoxically empty. I think the balance was struck here, and it is certainly my favorite design of the bunch.

Once again folks we have come to the end of another Kit Post. Like I said up top, I thought I had another two or three months to work on this, and with all the other work I’ve been doing lately, I was worried that I wouldn’t have the juice to get through this one on such short notice.

I’d love to hear any thoughts or other idea you might have on twitter, and if you like my work, as always – please check out my commission page for pricing and what to expect, as well as some of my recent designs.

Cheers, everyone!

Opinion, Soccer

Highway of Dreams: the Bloomington Crossroads breakdown

This is an editorial written by Sam “Taco” Shrum and edited by myself.

Early afternoon on a Sunday in 2020, I sat in a video call with a small group of friends. The season had passed already for us lower league soccer supporters- a time where the game on the pitch gave way to the metagame of Twitter. The preparations for supporting another year. The analysis of new team announcements, the scraping of social media for little clues about which players were coming and going. We clung to each scrap of info, stretching it out and savoring it while waiting for the sun to return with in-person football.

It was during this chat with my fellow supporters that Niamh became visibly distracted, looking away from the screen with the camera, typing something out. “Sorry- some new account for a new team showed up. Bloomington. I’m giving them business advice,” she said. My ears pricked up. Niamh had been steadily growing out her work doing design work for teams, and was relatively plugged into what worked and what didn’t. If she was talking to a brand new team, the stories could stretch out for quite awhile.

His answers… did reflect a deep well of passion and interest for what he was doing

I pulled up my own tab and began digging through. “NISA 2 Bloomington”, it promised, despite having a pinned tweet promising that USL soccer would be coming from them. I scrolled down further, finding the tweet where they said they didn’t have the millions for USL, and were pivoting to NISA. Announcing an intention to join a league without doing the minimum due diligence wasn’t unheard of, sadly- to pivot within a day was something else entirely. I took it all in slowly.

The Twitter metagame is a strange thing. Not long before, a close friend and I had created fake supporters groups that fooled the team in question and others in the league. Before that, I had once convinced a team that I was their social media manager, and become the official account on the website. Anything new was suspect- and we immediately flagged this Bloomington account as being part of the metagame. A fake. An attempt to get the credulous types to spread it further so there could be one big laugh at the end by everyone who was got.

And yet that was hardly enough to stop interest. One couldn’t even be sure that they would be there in-person in 2021; the metagame was all we had while we waited. I kept checking in, mulling over the possibility of road trips to Bloomington if they did join NISA. A Twitter poll appeared asking what the name of the club should be, and soon “NISA 2 Bloomington” was known as “Bloomington Crossroads FC”. A sensible name; it invoked Indiana’s state slogan of “the crossroads of America”. I wasn’t a fan of using a poll to decide things like this, usually- I’d poked at this Bloomington account during it, annoyed at their other options and that they’d done one at all. In the end, at least a reasonable name had been settled on. And then came the logo.

Gracin turned those Google docs into the bones of Bloomington Crossroads.

The logo would be teased for a solid week. Constantly shown in shadow or in silhouette at least once a day, often multiple times a day. “Get on with it,” we’d mutter, waiting for that next tidbit. And then it finally did arrive. “BLOOMINGTON FC CROSSROADS” it proclaimed, despite the club name being “Bloomington Crossroads FC”. Nobody was having this. I immediately went in and accused it of being a troll account and was blocked for my troubles. “Hater since day one!” BCFC proclaimed, casting me out.

While my other friends went to bat for me and told them they should learn to take criticism, I was left to stew in the interaction. A troll account would surely have avoided blocking me. The whole point of a troll was to garner more reactions. And the logo wasn’t intentionally bad in any way but the wording- the design was clean, and just needed to have its words re-arranged, which happened shortly afterwards. While more people insisted that Bloomington Crossroads was fake, a growing feeling that it was sincere as could be entered into my head. My responses to them were being taken personally, and there was some actual effort being put in.

No, there was something genuine about this. It might not be suitable for NISA, but it didn’t fit the pattern of a troll. Rumors began to swirl that a 13 year old was behind this effort, as the account quietly pivoted to working towards the Midwest Premier League instead. That rumor turned over for about a week as I kept watching, switching to alternate accounts to keep tabs on what was going on. And then one day, a WeFunder campaign was suddenly announced for supporter ownership.

Red flags went up immediately. Every other team that had done a WeFunder had staff and had at least played games, and success was still not guaranteed. Detroit City FC and Chattanooga FC had met big targets with flying colors; PDX FC met a modest goal and was able to continue; the New Jersey Teamsters, despite winning trophies in their previous leagues, acquired no real traction at all in crowdfunding. Nobody was even sure Bloomington even existed, let alone confident in their track record. It still wasn’t out of character for lower league owners to try something like that, but it still gnawed at me. Could it really be a teenager?

The Twitter metagame is a strange thing.

Their biography had once listed a phone number. I took 15 minutes in consultation with Niamh to come up with a list of questions to ask. We’d get the truth one way or another. I called in and the second the voice on the other end answered, I knew the truth- this had indeed been one teenager’s project, a boy named Gracin. Now the question became: what was their actual goal? I began to dig in: why Bloomington? Why the choice of leagues? What on earth was the WeFunder’s budget going to be used on?

I approached the discussion seriously as I would with anyone I wanted to talk to before investing in their business, and to Gracin’s credit, he had answers to each of these questions. His answers didn’t reflect the kind of due diligence you might expect from a dedicated businessperson, but nobody expected that. They did reflect a deep well of passion and interest for what he was doing, a sincere desire to see a club of his own in his town. Once I hung up and had time to think about it, I found opinion changing rapidly, a wellspring of admiration growing up for the young man.

Of course, at the same time there was the concern that he might be accidentally about to commit securities fraud by going through with the WeFunder. We all began to mull that over. The last thing any of us wanted was to see that spark damaged by a public outcry in response to it. I’d used several alt accounts so far to keep track of what Gracin had been doing once he blocked my main account, and I switched to one now to ask him to take it down. This was denied, and then my alternate account was blocked shortly after.

Well, he could be resourceful and stubborn all he wanted- I was also stubborn and resourceful, but with twice the experience. I thought about my options. WeFunder could be contacted, but that might not be enough to deter him from just registering a separate account. I wasn’t interested in whack-a-mole. We didn’t have any contact options for his parents, and I wasn’t interested in attempting to dox a teenager to find out how. And then I remembered that Gracin had said publicly that he’d had discussions with Peter Wilt.

If you don’t know who Peter Wilt is, he’s basically a serial soccer club founder. His whole specialty is getting teams off the ground, connecting with people to build a fan culture, and then moving on for the next big thing. His name being on a project is noteworthy in and of itself, and for Gracin to know this and have reached out to talk to him was one more indication that he paid attention to more than just what was on the pitch. I reached out and explained the situation so far to Wilt, who talked to Gracin’s parents. The plug was pulled on the WeFunder, and Bloomington Crossroads FC shut down its Twitter presence. One more weird chapter in lower league came to a close.

But just because one chapter ended didn’t mean that Gracin’s story within lower league ended. He rejoined Twitter, but as himself (@Gracin_Footy). Niamh and I followed him and cleared the air from my previous interactions, and then Niamh suggested to me that we should interview him on the experience and where Gracin was going next. We worked on a list of questions together, then decided to write this post about the whole experience.

Gracin had an already-established hobby of working on Google docs of hypothetical teams he’d create if he had the ability to. Cities, coaches, players- he would play FIFA and Football Manager at home, and then build completely new systems from scratch on computers without access to those games. One day, these thoughts turned local: why not in Bloomington, which he lived so close to? He loved watching Indiana University games and being around those fans, but what about an actual club to support there?

With the support of his parents, Gracin turned those Google docs into the bones of Bloomington Crossroads. Emails went out, and the Twitter account was born. Local interest immediately came back, reinforcing Gracin’s energy further. The immediate pushback saying that he needed to target lower leagues were all taken in stride. If anything, the thought of his club climbing up the ranks like in FM only excited him more.

Soon, Gracin reached out to an Italian designer and worked with him to understand Bloomington’s culture leading to one of the best crests unveiled in low-tier soccer. It’s unclear to me how involved his parents were in these design decisions, such as funding, but what is clear is that he has a strong eye for professionalism and high standards for his dream. If it had been me at 13, I would have tossed together something much more basic using templates and basic clipart.

Hater since day one!

Gracin’s vision may have been larger than his resources for his age, but he kept working up new answers and learning more about the system every step of the way. He recognizes, now, the WeFunder was a step too far. His parents remain very supportive of his soccer dreams. In the meanwhile, he still plans to keep going to lower-league games, interacting with the community, and learning. Niamh and I are looking forward to seeing what he makes of all that in the years to come, maybe interning in the front office of a local club or collegiate team? You could certainly do a lot worse than to hire a knowledge sponge with boundless energy and creativity.

Sam “taco” Shrum is an avid Detroit City FC supporter. When he isn’t working on the next release of Guardbook or storing history in Archive Le Rouge, taco spends horrifying amounts of time on Twitter looking for the next piece of bait for the trolls.

Gaming, Soccer

Counter Attack: The Soccer Board Game

Edit: The creators of the game have reached out and commented on some of my comments. I’ve done my best to edit out incorrect information and provide context where necessary.

I don’t do reviews often on this blog, that’s not really my schtick, but a particular board game came onto my radar because it combined two or three of my favorite things: soccer, nerdiness, and soccer kits. I thought I’d share some thoughts on it.

Spoiler alert for tl;dr:
I enjoyed the game thoroughly, but can see some weaknesses in it. I look forward to playing it again, but I’m not sure I can say the same for Brigid. The rules are easy(ish) if you know D&D, but the tactics can be a steep learning curve as the sport is baked very deeply into the game.

What it is:
Counter Attack is a UK-made card and dice tactics board game based on the actual sport, soccer. Two players move tokens around that represent players, pass, shoot, dribble, and tackle in order to maintain control of a ball with their feet. Foot. Ball. Why it’s called “soccer” should be obvious.

So Brigid and I sat down this morning after shopping and chores and gave the game a shot. Some background: Brigid has no experience with soccer and I have much more, being an avid watcher and player. This will come into play heavily by the end. We are both also big D&D players, which will also come into play heavily by the end.

We also had a bit of a time limit ticking behind us, the game rules suggest a live timer of 45 mintues for each half with each player getting about 1 minute (with a sand timer) to figure out their turn and lose any unused moves or actions when the minute runs out. Obviously we tossed out the 1 minute rule because we didn’t understand any of the other rules. In the two hours we spent we got one attack in each, maybe a total of five or six rounds.

So the game is already primed for a “professional” (with timer) and “amateur” (without) division in play, and that’s okay. As a former Warhammer player, I’m also used to board games that take hours, so the rules limiting how much movement one can do can certainly speed things along.

Henceforth: “attacker” refers to the human player who has control of the ball, “defender” refers to the human player who does not have control of the ball, and “player” refers to the in-game players represented by tokens and cards.

How it’s played:
It’s pretty easy, after randomly selecting teams playground style and randomly choosing a ref, you flip a coin (or call evens/odds on your 1 thru 6 d12) you pick to kickoff or defend. Counters are numbers 1 thru 11 so that a player card, with their stats is always tied to a particular counter on the board. Brigid and I lumped players naturally along rough forward/midfield/defender divisions, with defenders being the lower numbers and forwards getting the higher ones, as it was in the old days.

One interesting note right away is that you get 15 outfielders, which means you have five on the bench. However, it might also limit your formation, with what you draw dictating what you play, so if you have a favorite FIFA formation, you might have to forego it to strengthen what you have in your hand.

Newcastle lines up against Arsenal in Lancaster Gate

For me, playing as my beloved Magpies, I used a sort of 4-2-1-2-1 that had faded into a 3-4-3 by the time we called the game a wash. Brigid, who is not a soccer person, lined up in a 5-2-3 that had faded into an odd 5-1-4 by the end.

And this is the first weakness: non-soccer people, and even soccer folks who are more just a fan of a team and not necessarily an arm-chair manager, are going to be at a serious disadvantage starting off. For example, the offside rule is described in the booklet as just being the offside rule from real soccer. Not useful as many soccer folks already don’t get how the offside works.

Movement is best divided into the movement phase and all the other movements.

The movement phase is pretty easy to wrap your head around. The rule book describes it as 4-5-2. The attacker gets to move four players based off their pace skills, the defender reacts with five of their owner players based on their pace skills, and then the attacker gets to move two additional pieces (the rule book says “new players” so Brigid and I took it to mean players who had not yet moved that phase) two additional hexes each.

During the movement phase no shots or passes can be attempted… well… mostly. If the attacker moves a player into the penalty box, they may attempt a quick shot with a slight decrease to accuracy. The defender can attempt tackles, one per player, by approaching the player with the ball.

So to be concise, during the movement phase you may:

  • Both attacker and defender can move their players
  • The attacker can attempt a quick shot either by stepping into the penalty area, or if they just received a pass
  • The defender can attempt to tackle to regain possession

Okay, so what about this “all the other movement” you mentioned?

Well, if you’re a fan of D&D, you probably know what an attack of opportunity is. If you don’t, it’s when a character gets a free action because their location is advantageous. They’re generally pretty common sense: if you bend over to tie your shoes in the middle of a battle, the guy trying to kill you is going to try to kill you while you’re distracted.

A lot of actions, and I mean a lot – it’s just about all of them – give players free movement of usually one to three hexes. Keeping track of these free movements can often be far more important than anything, and they’re not collected in a single place on the quick-glance card or the rule book. For example, a high-ball gives the attacker and the defender one three-hex movement to get to the ball. And if it’s into the penalty area, the keeper gets a single hex. Plus the keeper can already move three hexes in a dive. Shots give defenders a free movement to try to deflect the ball. There’s a lot, I’m sure I’m missing some here, but understanding these free moves is paramount to getting the tactics. If you don’t understand them, you might waste full movements during the movement phase to do what you would’ve been able to do for free anyway.

Edit: The additional movements are collected on the quick-reference guide which, in fact, has two sides.

One of the biggest free movements is once per movement phase, if the ball is in the final third and a player moves in the final third as part of their movement phase, every player in the opposite third starting with the attackers gets a free 6 hex movement. This is actually pretty good to know because you shouldn’t waste movement on getting defenders into shape while you’re attacking. But you need to know it’s possible.

After the movement phase, there’s this nebulous, quasi-phase which can be summed up as “the ball phase”. This is when you do things like shooting, passing, and the such. There’s a lot of choices to be made. A short pass on the ground can be followed up by a first-time pass (basically a player strings a pass without moving to make one big pass), it’s a great way to take advantage of a weakness in the middle.

I used a weakness in the mid to string two passes together. and quickly shift the momentum forward.

In the tackling and dribbling is where things fell apart. Brigid rolled a string of 1s that I called as advantages to keep my momentum up, which highlights what Brigid and I figured is probably the number one weakness of the game rules: fouls.

At the beginning of the game, you pick a ref at random. Refs have only one stat: leniency (which is how likely they hand out a card after a foul). When a foul has been committed (defender rolls a 1 during the tackle) the attacker can decide if it’s a foul or if the ref called advantage. If they choose for a foul, which Brigid did when I managed to foul her, both the attack and defender have to roll a dice. The attacker is checking to see if their player is injured, the defender is seeing if their player is booked.

I picked up a card and Brigid an injury for this contest in midfield, it did set up a potentially dangerous free kick, which began the spiral of four or five consecutive 1s for Brigid.
Also note the Newcastle players who are sideways, we did this to mark who had moved in any given movement phase.

The problem is the attacker decides. Not the ref. So even though we have the most strict ref in the deck, he gave me a string of advantages because as I knew that the chance of injuring my glass-cannon number 9 was too high to risk. I’d rather not have him lose pace to injury and maintain my momentum.

Edit: The creator clarified to us that regardless if the attacker chooses advantage or not, resolve the foul and the injury as normal, which to me: a) doesn’t address the problem of injuries seeming a tad common and disastrous, and b) takes a fun little trade of decision of “do you take the advantage and lose the chance to give the opponent a card, or take the free kick with its chance to set up a powerful attack?”

Brigid’s recommendation, which I agree with, is make it like D&D: 1 is auto fail, 6 is auto success; but for them to be special you need to confirm them. So rolling a 1 in a tackle makes a foul, fine. Then have the humans roll. If the defender gets a 1, there’s a chance for a card. If the attacker rolls a 1, there’s a chance for an injury. And those can be tweaked. Maybe it’s a coin flip. Maybe it’s 1-2 for failure.

Anyway, over the course of two hours we went through maybe five or six full rounds. With Brigid’s rolls coming up poorly, and her lack of soccer tactics, I was picking up that she was running out of good will for the game. I was already pretty surprised that she offered to play.

After an attempted shot was blocked for a corner, we lined up, and an unmarked attacker headed it into the far end of the goal, which we used as the bow to tie up today’s attempt to learn the game.

Newcastle heads it past the keeper and takes three points in today’s match. The keeper here has been positioned post-movement, 1 hex for high-ball into the penalty spot, plus a further 3 hexes for a dive to save.

The disparity in soccer tactical awareness (plus like five goddamned 1s) really killed the friendly spirit of the game, which fair enough. We aren’t surprised that understanding soccer is vital to playing a soccer board game, and we’re not counting that against the game. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but it must’ve been very frustrating for Brigid.

The rule book is pretty good, I must say, with a few glaring issues (goal kicks need a label and should be part of the goal keeper page), the little scenario pictures are really clever and often answer a lot of edge questions like the long kick picture has a defender in the line of the pass, outside of the zone of control against the attacker which automatically answered a question we had “can a defender intercept a long kick?”. No. It lands further down the pitch and they have to chase after it. Most of the scenarios have little edge-cases included in them visual for quick resolution.

In the end, this is a game that I think will have many fans pretty quickly. It’s subbuteo for the D&D crowd. Plus, since Counter Attack lacks any physical interaction with goal keeping, it has the possibility to be much more available to a wider range of physical abilities.

I also suspect it’ll be a game with a thousand variations soon enough. The rules are pretty much a sturdy skeleton I can see more meatier rules applied to over time. Every league might have their own home rules, and really that’s great, because then players own the game as much as the creators and are thus much more invested in its success. Hopefully I can get some fellow social distancers around to try it out soon enough and see what you all think!

Cheers!

Some quick tips Brigid and I game up with as we played on mostly how to track things:

  • Use the dice to count how many players you’ve moved
  • Turn player counters sideways on the board to mark them as having moved especially as the attacker (Edit: the creators recommend pushing your player cards up or pulling them down to show they’ve moved, but as you can see in our picture, we were pretty tight on space, so this is a preference thing, I thought we were being rather clever and it’s immediately visible while you’re scanning the field rather than your bench)
  • Use the cardboard balls and not the wooden token balls, you can put them on top of the token who has the ball
  • Use the other cardboard ball token to mark the card of the player with the ball
  • Might be a good idea, especially if you’re learning the rules, to limit the game to a number of turns, and schedule a few hours, especially if this is your first time playing

Some ideas I came up that might be used to expand the game further:

  • Adding out of bounds and throw-ins, for example dribble checks when playing on the line, tackle checks to poke it out, high balls and long passes rolling out of play. Throw-ins treated like standard passes or long throws like high passes
  • Goal kicks are defined in the rule book, it’s just not labeled a goal kick, so searching for it in the PDF yields nothing but other expansion rules
  • Player traits (like being able to do long throw-ins)
  • Ref should be a token, with a field of vision (this might make things much more complicated but also more interesting)
  • Ref traits to add more interest to fouls, like we’ve all had that ex-defender ref overlook a crunching tackle or two
  • As above, the fouls seem very heavy handed and are almost always representative of heavy, game-changing fouls instead of being a part of the game.
  • Injuries are really strong, maybe a chance of them resolving as the game continues is a good idea, especially at half time including rolling for severity? Like a 1 means needs immediate subbing, 6 is injury fades after a few turns, and 2 thru 5 is the injury lasts a half or more, but doesn’t need immediate attention
  • Since players can keep pace up for the whole game, substitutions are really only there to deal with injuries, which seems “off” from the spirit of a game about team management
  • Manager or “sideline team” cards, again with traits and stats that might impact things like fixing injuries
  • Captains, not sure what you can do with them, but captains are a thing and maybe something can be figured out like sharing stats, improving rolls, or maybe talking your way out of a card
  • Please center the hexes on the board, it’s really weird that there’s not hexes in the middle of the pitch for the center spot, penalty spots, and to keep the goals even
Flags, Symbols, and Crests, Kits, Soccer

Kit Nerd Special – Newcastle United

Skip to the next drop-cap paragraph if you don’t care about my background or opinions on the 2020 takeover.

To my usual readers – friends and family folks – it’d probably come as no surprise that I have a great deal of enthusiasm for Newcastle United, a football club based in the North East of England, on the River Tyne. In February and March of 2019, I took a trip to Newcastle (as well as Glasgow and Kendal) and managed to catch two Newcastle games (both two-nill games in our favor: Huddersfield and Burnley), my first in-person after starting to support the team since 2007.

I often get asked “why?”. Why Newcastle? It probably would’ve made more sense in the late 90s, when Newcastle was riding high, but in the late 00s the team was already having issues and the sale of the club from Sir John Hall to Mike Ashley (on the very year I started supporting the club) has proven over the last 13 years to be completely disastrous, marked by an utter lack of ambition and two relegations, as well as hemorrhaging any talent we did manage to attract.

In 2007 I was a freshmen at Purdue University and making a lot of new friends. Supporting football almost always meant English football. I was already a fan of the German national team and flirted with supporting FC Bayern-München (though my eventual German love became and remains FC St. Pauli), but Bundesliga was harder to find on TV back then. Plus if you weren’t supporting an EPL team, there wasn’t much room for actual talk and banter with other folks outside of European competitions.

So, I needed an EPL club. And being me it wasn’t going to be as easy as picking one from the top five or being pressured by my peers into supporting their team just for the camaraderie. I wanted a team to call my own, that spoke to me and the person I was.

For me, Newcastle reminded me of my then-home, Cleveland. It was post-industrial. On a body of water. Far from what was considered “important”. A far-cry from its heyday. And the sports? The sports were suffering, but the fans were die-hard, loyal, and had a certain sense of humor about them. It was this spirit that drew me to Newcastle United, a spirit that has persisted to this day, drawing me closer and closer to the team.

And now, in the last few days of May, 2020 – it seems to be over.

Mike Ashley is, almost certainly, done with Newcastle United. After 13 years of milking the club as nothing more than a billboard to hold Sports Direct signs, it appears that a consortium backed by the Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, is on the brink of making Newcastle United the one of, if not the, wealthiest club on the planet.

Which, of course, has brought its own confusions, thoughts, and opinions. I have many of them, I’ve shared them with folks as prompted, but mostly haven’t outside of a few twitter posts and a few posts on r/NUFC, the Newcastle United subreddit. I am very much anti-Mike Ashley. I am glad to be seeing the back of him and hope the door hits him where biology splits him. I hope he buys the Mackems and I hope he completely fucks that up too.

But it is just our luck that we’re trading the unmotivated and apparently skittish cockney bastard for PIF, which through various deals and purchases, has tried desperately and often wildly successfully to cover for the crimes of Saudi Arabia through “sportswashing” or, to put it as flatly as possible, projecting Saudi Arabia’s image to the West as one in the same while also going through the tried and true motions of bread and circus for its own people.

The situation is one I’d rather not be in, to be frank. I agree largely with both sides. I don’t support PIF. I don’t support Saudi Arabia. I hate Mike Ashley and I do support Newcastle United. I think it is wrong for outsiders to think the Geordies support Saudi Arabia because they refuse to be turned off from their club, a club that is very dear to them in many ways I think Americans especially do not understand. I think there is also a minority of folks, either in bad faith or for whatever reason, need to lay off and stop acting like PIF is bloodless. Especially when it comes to attack victims of Saudi Arabia.

In many ways, Newcastle is my non-strings attached sports team. I don’t really interest myself in the politicking around the team. This, of course, is in stark contrast to my love of Detroit City FC and FC. St. Pauli, both heavily politically left teams. That said, I plan to take the future one season at a time. I suspect those first few seasons will be something grand. The wins. The big names. The expectations. They will all build. And so too will Newcastle’s support here in the US. I guess, succinctly, I expect my love of Newcastle to evolve over the next few years as its popularity grows and other people actually form opinions about them. Opinions they will then share with me, whether I want to hear them or not.

Only time will tell.

So. That was a lot of words. It was written basically in one take over my lunch break. leading into Memorial Day Weekend, a time that would usually mean sports and celebration in the United States, but is currently rainy and probably going to get hot, and then thunderstormy.

Oh. And there’s a crazy pandemic going on and it’s been a load of fun. I swear.

Once a year I do a post where I theorize and conjure some kits for Detroit City FC. I call it my “kit nerd” post. One team I’ve actually never done a design for is Newcastle United. I couldn’t tell you why. I love Newcastle’s kits, and I have extremely strong opinions on them:

  • The tops should be primarily black
  • More, thinner stripes rather than fewer, thicker stripes
  • Stripes should be spaced evenly
  • The white space should be the same width as the stripes
  • Shorts and socks should always be black
  • Blue should be either used as an accent, or not used at all
  • If there’s no blue accent, the numbers on the back should be red
  • Stripes should be front and back, and on the sleeves
  • If you can make the socks hooped, you should

These are just off the top of my head. And with those opinions, I wanted to create three designs (as I usually do for Detroit City): a home kit, an away kit, and a clash or alternate kit.

Some other last thoughts before I just pull the trigger and do that damn thing: I kept Fun88 as sponsor because I don’t really care that a lot of folks have been throwing various Saudi Arabian logos and companies on there. Fun88 is the current sponsor, that’s who I used. I also don’t do real-life manufacturers. They all suck, and these are my designs anyway.

Lastly, my main source for historical kit designs remains Historical Football Kits over at http://www.historicalkits.co.uk/. They are an extremely valuable source, and I thank them for the work they do.

Let’s get to it.

Theoretical 2020-2021 Newcastle United FC home kit

I wanted a kit that would invoke one of my all-time favorite Newcastle kits, a recent one, the 2017-2018 kits. What a great kit. Clean, simple big-ass red numbers on the back. It’s really gorgeous. It’s been followed by two of my least favorite home kits. 2018-2019 had too much white and I hated every second of the white socks, and 2019-2020 with it’s one, dorky stripe in the middle with black sides.

But there was a little tweak I wanted to make, blue. Knowing where I was heading with the away and alternate kits, I wanted to bring that splash of sky blue to this kit in subtle piping on the sides, sorts, socks, and sleeves.

For me, this would be a quintessential Newcastle kit. Unmistakable for anyone else. If you’re a regular here and you’re wondering why I always have more to say about away and alt kits than my home designs, this is why. A home kit shouldn’t need explanation. If you’re explaining your home kit, you fucked up.

Theoretical 2020-2021 Newcastle United FC away kit

When coming up with an away and alternate kits, I like the idea of going back in history. Taking something from deep in the club’s DNA or history, and in this case elevate something that struck a chord with the fans. In 2014-2015 Newcastle United wore a “4th” kit for exactly one game, a replica of a kit Newcastle wore from 1914 to 1930 as their change (albeit with dark shorts). I wanted to go ahead and make that kit the change.

To counteract all the plainness in the white and black, I called upon gold in very limited use to unify the design with the sponsor, without going heavy on a color like blue, which I used on the home kit. For this reason, I actually switched the ribbon on the crest to silver, as it was with the 125th Anniversary kit, so there’s no blue anywhere but in the banner on top of the castle in the crest. To round off the design, I chose to use the socks that appeared on a number of Newcastle kits from 1958 to 1961 – white with striped turnovers.

Theoretical 2020-2021 Newcastle United FC clash or alternate kit

This is another kit based in history. Early history. Pre-history, even. It’s also why I wanted to go heavy on the blue for the home kit. One of my favorite little tidbits about Newcastle United is that the striped kits, the kits that have literally defined the club visually for well over a century, is that they were originally change kits, loaned to us when we clashed with another side. I love that, and I love when the club makes little call backs or in the case of 1995-1996 and 2018-2019, we readopt an older kit as an away kit (in this case a red and black hooped kit from 1881 as a maroon and navy hooped kit with cream-colored shorts).

Here I’m taking the top from 1886-1889 home kits and the shorts/socks of the 1881 kit to create something completely different. Black, red, gold are three amazing colors and they always play so well with one another. And once again, I have dropped the blue entirely, even from the crest, to let these colors really shine.

The collar is half-and-half as well, with the colors opposite the main body, and trimmed in gold to further emphasize the split. Very minimal use of the gold elsewhere, it’s completely gone from the shorts and the socks. For me, this was to help the sponsor feel more incorporated with the rest of the shirt.

My three designs for the 2020-2021 Newcastle United FC season

Anyway, that’s all I wrote for this one. I hope everyone enjoyed the designs, maybe it answered some questions you might’ve had for me regarding the Newcastle takeover and other stuff.

If you liked the designs, feel free to follow me here or on twitter where I’d love to hear your thoughts on these designs. Tell me what you liked, what you’d’ve done different. And if you’re looking for some designs to be made of your own, I am actually available as either a quick sketch-up designer or a consultant. You can read more about that on my kit design commission page with details such as pricing and what I expect from commissioners.

Cheers!

Detroit City FC, Flags, Symbols, and Crests, Kits, Soccer

The Kit Post – 2020

This is a bit delayed what with so much more Detroit City than we’ve ever had before. This is the sixth Kit Post and it’s the closest to it’s actual year, though I am unsure if Detroit get’s its new kits before the Spring session of NISA or before the premier of our women’s (!!!) team in the summer. Or, alternatively, after the women’s season and before the start of the 2020/21 season of NISA.

If I had to guess, it’d be option number three. Anyway, let’s cut the chaff and get to this, shall we?

For the uninitiated every year after the DCFC season ends, I write up a review of the previous kits (or current as it might very well be) and draw up some potential designs for the upcoming season (hence the title being a year in the future).

The post from previous years can be found here:

2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019

First, for the interested, you can actually see a wiki-fied list of Detroit City’s kits in as many combinations as I could remember. If you know of any other combinations, let me know! Especially if you have photographic evidence. I’d love to build a robust list. Some of the designs are not quite up to snuff, but I’d like to fix that in my free time over the next year.

So we didn’t go all out with our home kits, as I “predicted”, rather quite the opposite – DCFC returned to the dark purply maroon with a simple, clean kit with the dark red used in the piping elements on all three (the socks I’m not 100% about, tbh) pieces of the kit. Initially I think this caused a bit of a stir after a number of years of more complicated kits. The last time we wore plain kits were the much more off-the-shelf Nike kits of 2016.

The away kits were certainly a thing, though. White bodied and red sleeved, they used the red in the piping and after a humorous mistake by Toledo, appeared in the “Kit Man Moi combination” using the red shorts and socks in order to prevent a clash. These were certainly a thing to behold, beautiful even, in their simplicity without just being plain white. I loved the look personally, even though I didn’t get one from the store.

Lastly, this is the first time Detroit City has ever had a true “alternate” kit, and boy were they better than anyone could ever imagine. Pure black with gold piping. What a marvelous look for the club and I’m so happy they got to be used more than once. The boys in rouge looked absolutely stunning in black.

With three solid hits, it’s almost impossible for me to imagine what could be next. And that isn’t just a remark about kits, that’s also a remark about everything. The season was spectacular. Top of the table, Midwest finals, Members Cup champion. Our new Gaffa created a powerful side that played well and looked like a cohesive team, something I think was sorely missing the last few seasons.

But let’s give it a try anyway, shall we?

Anyway, the usual disclaimers before we continue:

  • I don’t work for the DCFC front office
  • The DCFC front office fucks with me
  • Kits shown here are not official direction
  • Logos, league, and sponsors are used without permission
  • Sponsors and league are not official or necessarily endorsed by our front office
  • The reality of 2020 might be very different than what I predict here, I love the challenge regardless

First things first.

Hummel?

Or Adidas?

Obviously for my kits it doesn’t matter, but for the unaware, NISA has signed a preferred supplier deal with Danish kit maker Hummel. This deal, as far as this writer is aware, basically gives teams access to cheaper, customizable kits from a supplier large enough to handle the quantities needed while allowing other teams to choose other suppliers if so desired.

Here’s the thing. I like Adidas, but I also understand that they are expensive and that their recent batch of templates leave a lot to be desired, especially in an era where even most small suppliers offer full sublimation of kits at a fraction of the cost of Adidas’ prices. A savings which can hopefully bring kit costs back to a more reasonable $50 or $60.

Hummel also was a leader in the sport hijab business as the main supplier for the Afghan Women’s NT. We’d be partnered with a company that holds many of our ideals and has partnered with some big names.

I guess what I’m saying is – if DCFC ditches Adidas for Hummel, I won’t lose much sleep over it. And hopefully I can afford more kits, which isn’t that just swell?

Okay, moving on to the part that I’m sure you’re all actually interested in, my 2020 designs for the Detroit City FC kits.

The Home Kit

Despite some earlier comments on thinking of going 90s, I ended up retreating from that pretty quickly. My focus on neotraditional design is pretty incompatible with the variety of design that embodied the 90s in football and despite doing some research, I don’t think it’s an æsthetic I could replicate in the time frame I had set aside for this project.

Here I went with a rather clean design, focusing only on trim and small flourishes. I touched up the collar and cuffs with a dark maroon, small touches of gold. On the left shoulder, a gradient of fleurs de lys come down roughly in line with the crest and are echoed in the socks with a very faint pattern there as well as the two gold stripes.

I like the over-all feel of this kit, though it is not my favorite from the three this year. It’s simple without being plain; the elements like the fleurs and the gold flashes on the neck and cuffs given extra weight from a design that isn’t fighting itself for your attention.

The Away Kit

This was the first kit I finished this year and it’s arguably my favorite. There’s a different sort of feeling when you work on a home kit than an away kit an especially a clash/alternative kit.

When asking for ideas for the home kit, I got some suggestions for sure, but there were definitely some ideas where I thought to myself, “I’d rather not start a riot.” Home kits are sacred territory and making big, uncalled-for changes can get a certain reaction from a fan base.

Away kits, though, have a bit of leeway and I wanted to play with that leeway this year. This idea struck me while doing research on historicalkits.co.uk, Specifically I was looking at Hearts kits and I noticed the black socks with maroon and white hoops on many of their kits back in the teens through 1940s. The idea of combining those with a white and maroon hooped kit was too much to resist, so here we are.

The Clash/Alternative Kit

This final kit was going to be an important piece of the puzzle. Alternate kits are used to fill any gaps between the home and away kits when it comes to color. It is easy to see a situation where the rouge home and the white/rouge away kits are both ruled to be ‘clashing’ with another team’s, for example that’s what happened with the game against Toledo at Keyworth.

I think these pretty much fill the gaps.

It’s sort of a take on the alternates from this year with a pretty obvious tweak. We’ve done gold and white a number of times and it’s not a bad look, but black and gold look so damn good together, and it’d be true even if I wasn’t a Boilermaker. I followed New Balance and went with half-and-half socks, this time with a bit of a chance to transition from one to the other without looking like the sock was accidentally only dipped halfway into the dye. The crest is in alternate colors, this time majority gold with the statue in black.

The sash, probably the most prominent feature here, was actually a late addition, spurred on by the suggestion that the gold felt empty. I do think lighter colors are more at a risk of feeling empty than dark. Instead of fading normally, it actually pixelates out of existence as it goes up to the shoulder, which is what gave me the idea of making the fleurs de lys on the home kit fade out quickly going the opposite way.

They, in a way, echo each other.

So that’s all she wrote, my friends! Another annual Kit Nerd Post come and gone.

As always, I hope everyone enjoyed the read and loves the designs, if you have any comments feel free to reach out via twitter. I’d love to hear your thoughts or any other ideas you might have. If you’re interested in perhaps having me work on some kits for you, you can check out my kit design commission page with details such as pricing and what to expect.

I wish everyone a happy holidays and hope to be post more soon!

Cheers.

Flags, Symbols, and Crests, Kits, Soccer

Eleventh Warrior Appears

A while ago, I posted a set of eleven kits for the eleven members of the still-to-be-renamed NPSLPro’s Founders Cup, which kicks off in August. The Founder’s Cup, for the uninitiated, is basically a trial run of the NPSLPro before the league actually kicks off and is divided into East and West divisions.

But before even the NPSL amateur season could kick off, there’s already been some changes with that original eleven line-up. Weeks after NISA gained (provisional?) tier 3 status, Cal United tucked and rolled from the group. While nothing official has been confirmed, there have been some rumblings of them and at least one other team some had tagged for NPSLPro-ship are realigning their interests with NISA rather than NPSLPro.

Suddenly, our eleven were down to ten… until a second eleventh appeared on the horizon: Napa Valley 1839 FC.

Napa 1839 is an interesting, if little head-cocking, addition to the line-up. When creating what is essentially a punk-rock soccer league, the wine-mum club seems to stand out a bit, but then again there are already a few clubs that might be wrecking the vibes for some people; Milwaukee and Phoenix especially.

I’ve actually designed kits for Napa in the past on my twitter account, which they kindly responded to. In my previous design, I went with a bottle green/primary, marlot/alternate set up. They actually seemed to take this into consideration and when their second kits were unveiled they were green/primary and a red/white combo for the alternate. So starting with that, I’ve come up with a set to join the other ten (plus one).

Napa Valley 1839 FC

For the home kits, I wanted to stick with the two-tone green combo that’s on Napa’s crest, which is one of my favorite in the NPSL. I know that it’s a little cheesy, but the Napa Valley front office seems to have a good sense of humor about it all, which I can respect. Hopefully they get that my “mummy’s chalkboard art” aesthetic above comes from a place of brotherly love and not malice. The other thing I wanted to do with both the primary and secondary kits was give it a watermark look using a sublimation process – here it’s some grapevine art picked up from Freepik. Accreditation done, the secondary goes to that red/white combo that Napa is already using, and reduces the water marking to just the shorts and the left shoulder, just off the crest.

So that gets us caught back up on the eleven teams in the Founders Cup. Welcome Napa Valley to the family. I look forward to the chance to beat you and then share a lovely Chardonnay.

Soccer, Travel

Kendal Town 3 – Market Drayton Town 2

So, as I type this, my trip to England is coming to a close, but it isn’t quite over yet. I still have a trip down to London tomorrow and Monday (the 4th) the flight back to Detroit. I think back on the last week and a half and I’m exhausted. I wouldn’t’ve done it any different, but it is amazing that I was able to pull it off. Newcastle, Glasgow, Kendal; all absolutely lovely places and I would go back in a heartbeat, especially to just explore or enjoy the countryside or history a little bit more.

It’s been a while since I’ve written, so I’ll back up a bit. On the 28th, I jumped in a train or three and headed from Newcastle, on the east side of the island to Kendal, in the west.

I say good bye to Newcastle central and then headed out on a journey that involved three trains, delays, someone trespassing on the tracks, nearly boarding the wrong train, nearly waiting for the wrong train, then finally getting to the right train. Waiting for 30 minutes in the cold for the last train… which I road for 5 minutes.

But I was in Kendal and I set about exploring the city and the surrounding countryside. I had trouble capturing the whole city from above, but I did what I could by climbing up a tall hill overlooking the city, where the castle is, and doing my best.

The second picture is actually of my hotel from the castle tower. The castle and hill were beautiful, but then I went about exploring the town proper the next day, and found it to be much larger than I expected and much more bustling. 30,000 plus live in the area, much more than I thought.

Most of the city is made of this grey stone, giving Kendal it’s nickname, the Auld Grey Town. But many buildings are rather colorful, like these ones here.

It’s also a town of alleyways and yards in the middle of blocks of buildings. Down one of these alleyways was a little distillery, which of course I popped my head into.

And the city had some old-fashioned public or free houses, including the highly recommended and eclectic Ring O’ Bells, where, if you’re lucky, you get to meet Kendal’s biggest character: Jeff from Swindon.

And yes.

I met Jeff from Swindon/

The next day, today as of writing, was my final match of the trip: Kendal Town FC vs Market Drayton Town FC. Kendal Town is in a bit of a bind. Manager walked with the first team after issues getting paid by the club came to light. There’s a fissure between fans who want the chairman to step down and those that either don’t care or don’t blame him for the issues facing the club. As of writing the current manager might be the one paying the players, and from what I could gather, he wasn’t a manager so much as a wealthy gentleman who fancied himself one. Kendal Town is in the relegation fight, and a relegation at this level of football is basically into obscurity. Every game is vital. Every point is needed.

Luckily, I’m three for three when rooting for the homeside.

This pitch is a bit different from the previous two: tucked away in the hills behind the castle and a graveyard, it’d be easy to miss if you weren’t looking for it.

There’s a bar and a clubhouse overlooking the pitch, which as the game progressed got more and more tempting. The weather was chilly to start, but by the end was bitter and it was pouring rain. I ended up catching a ride home with a friend of a friend.

Supporters had a covered… terrace… of sorts. Covered was all that really mattered, by the end. I actually poked around on the other side where there was more covered seating, but the crowd there was either unengaged, or engaged… to one the other squad’s players.

My view of the pitch:

It was a hard-fought, scrappy game, made so much worse by the worsening conditions. Kendal opened up the scoring, but in the process knocked Market Drayton’s keeper out of the game. After a lengthy wait, one of their defenders donned the keeper kit and play resumed for the first half. By halftime the score was even: one-one.

Kick off for the second half and within 30 seconds it’s 1-2 for Market.

There was a real sense of defeat hanging around, even the fans who still supported the chairman seemed to know Kendal was not doing well. There were several conversations either overheard or participated in on the nature of support and supporting. Kendal was, for a moment, a microcosm of supporter culture throughout the world. Show up to support the lads? Or avoid giving money to a FO that doesn’t care? There’s no easy or right answer there.

Regardless, a defender handled a ball during a goal line scramble and Kendal got awarded the penalty. Fan-favorite Aaron Helliwell lined up, and equalized.

By now, Kendal was playing much better, much more aggressively and Market was started to back down from that challenge. And the rain kept falling.

Finally, on an early cross from just outside the box, Ryan Moore comes flying in and heads it straight past the keeper.

It was a long, long ten minutes plus stoppage in the cold and in the rain, but eventually three whistles came and Kendal Town had three points, three impossible points. And I leave England four for four, perhaps far better than I could’ve ever expected.

Tomorrow I start the journey home. I’m ready to go back home. A cold is setting in, I’m homesick, our cat is probably so pissed off, and I still don’t get to see my Brigid again until the end of the week. Yet, this’ll always have happened. And I will and do remember it fondly.

Until next time, England.

Cheers.