FRESH SEASON, FRESH THREADS

We are delighted to reveal our brand-new away shirt which will be used for the 21/24 seasons.

The kit, co-ordinated by Luke Bushnell-Wye encompasses the decision taken by members for us to wear an orange shirt, whilst incorporating a unique bespoke pattern inspired and drawn by our junior section.

Our shirt is now available to order from the club shop on the website costing £38 for adults and £28 for juniors.

When discussing his initial ideas for the shirt, Luke revealed that he felt he had to “try something different,” to make it stand out against other clubs more famous for wearing orange.

He said, “The concept of working with the juniors was the starting point for the design.

“I knew I didn’t want to do another competition- with those, one person is delighted to be the winner but most end up disappointed, so I had the challenge of how to include as many inputs from as many of the juniors as possible

“This will sound odd, but my mind went to those tea-towels that schools produce where every child draws a self-portrait.

“There have also been some great kits from other clubs in the wider landscape recently that made use of hand drawn elements or repeated illustrations, and I’m sure people aware of what I’m talking about will see those influences in there as well.

The decision to use our junior section as a key element of the shirt was to create a shirt that identified with the whole club.

“It’s easy to forget sometimes that the first team aren’t the only team that pulls on our jersey.

“We’ve got the under 21s, we’ve got the walking football team, and we’ve also got the fantastic juniors set-up, all of whom represent the club and wear our colours – colours I want them to be able to feel connected to.

“I hope the juniors have enjoyed the process and are proud that their drawings are part of the club’s history.

Due to the curtailed 20/21 season our new kit will be run for the slightly extended period of three years, and Luke added that every junior player that submitted a design has been featured on the shirt.

“Every junior who submitted a drawing is featured at least once on the kit as well, which I’m very proud of.

“I pulled and edited images of the drawings into a design that would repeat seamlessly on the kit, and then it was just a case of deciding how big and where on the kit to place this texture, a process that included others at the club, including the management.

“We settled on a scale that gives the impression of a darker shade of orange from far away, but that reveals more and more details the closer you get.

As we did with our home shirt, we have shown our clear stance against discrimination and our support to NHS and Social Care workers with the rainbow pattern across the hem.

“Discrimination in football and sport generally continues to be a problem, and I think it’s hugely important that the club continue to show our stance in a visible way.

“We continue to stand against all forms of discrimination and support others that do so as well, including many other campaigns that don’t explicitly use the rainbow as an emblem, such as Kick It Out.

We are also delighted to announce that Chemiteq Limited have decided to continue their support for the club by sponsoring our new away shirt as well as their product Oxyl Pro sponsoring our home shirt.”

On behalf of Chemiteq Limited, Director Alan Riding said, “It was a pleasure to be asked by 1874 Northwich whether we would be sponsors of the fantastic new away kit. Having both the home and away shirts made sense to our company Chemiteq Limited, and we look forward to working together in the future.”

Our outgoing away kit and now third strip, designed Phil Galloway, brought international success to the club and with a captive audience for our shirts, Luke believed it was important to move away from that.

“I was acutely aware of the international success of the last away kit and was conscious of the fact that maybe by trying to engineer a situation where lightning could strike twice, I might be in danger of over-stretching.

“If I set out on the process with achieving international recognition as our top priority, I think you’d be able to tell, and it wouldn’t have sat well with me.

“The success of the last away shirt was incredible and thoroughly deserved, and I’d love for this shirt to gain the same recognition but designing an 1874 kit for 1874 people had to be my aim.

“At the end of the day we’re a community football club. So, I decided to focus on creating a kit that was embedded in our own community first and foremost, and I think I’ve achieved that. It’s inclusive. It’s us. It’s 1874, as far as I’m concerned.”

You can see us debut our away kit in this afternoon’s fixture against Clitheroe!