Historical Football Kits

• Club
• Background
• Kits
• Sources

Bristol Rovers

Formed 1883

Founder member of Division Three 1920

Kit History

Background

In September 1883 a group of young men formed a football club and decided to call it Black Arabs FC. They played at Purdown in East Bristol and became known as the "Purdown Poachers" due to their habit of persuading players of other clubs to join them. The following year they changed their name to Eastville Rovers and in 1892 they joined the Bristol & District League. By the summer of 1895, Eastville Rovers were based at the Star Inn on Fishponds Road and played all their home matches at the Ridgeway Ground in, according to Byrne, Stephen & Jay a "a kit of buff and green." As no photographs of this unique outfit exist I have used artistic licence to present it here. In 1897 the club turned professional and became Bristol Eastville Rovers: the following year "Eastville" was dropped and they became known as Bristol Rovers. In 1899 the club joined the Southern League, winning the championship in 1905. In 1920, Rovers became founder members of the Football League Third Division along with the rest of the Southern League Division One clubs.

Rovers hardly set the world alight and remained an average to poor Third Division team until the 1950s. In 1931, the club adopted blue and white quartered shirts: the manager believed that this design would make his players look bigger. This strip has since become synonymous with the club. In March 1940 the club, faced with financial problems, sold their Eastville Stadium to the Bristol Greyhound Company and thereafter rented their ground. This decision would come back to haunt the club some forty years later.

In 1953 the Pirates won the Third Division (South) championship and took their place in Division Two and for the rest of the decade the club were firmly established in the top half of the division. In 1962 Rovers were relegated to the Third Division. During the Sixties the cherished quartered shirts were dropped in favour of striped shirts and later plain blue. It is fitting that the side that won promotion in 1974 did so wearing quartered shirts that had been revived the previous season.

Rovers made little headway at the higher level and in 1981 they were back in Division Three. The previous year, faced with mounting debts and increasing rental payments, the club moved away from Bristol to share Bath City's Twerton Park ground. Many believed that their days were numbered but they survived and ten years later, with Gerry Francis in charge, Rovers were promoted once again and spent three seasons in Division Two before the inevitable relegation in 1993.

During the Eighties and Nineties, considerable imagination was applied to producing variations on the basic quartered shirts. The 1996 version, however, was universally despised and nicknamed "The Tesco Bag" for reasons that are obvious.

In 1996 Rovers entered into a ground sharing agreement with Bristol Rugby and returned to their home city. Within a few years, the rugby club fell on hard times and Rovers were able to buy out their interest in the ground for a mere £10,000. In 2001 Rovers dropped into Nationwide Division Three the first time that the club has been in the lowest division since their Division Three (South) days. In the early years of the new millennium the club has struggled, narrowly avoiding the drop into the Conference.

Sources

• (a) Bristol Rovers FC: The Definitive History 1883-2003 (Byrne, Stephen & Mike Jay 2003)
• (b) Bristol Rovers FC Images of Sport (Mike Jay 1999)
• (c) Club Colours (Bob Bickerton)
• (d) Bristol Rovers Official Site
• (e) Football Focus
• (f) Mike Jay
• (g) David King
• (h) Alick Milne
• (i) Fabrizio Taddei (Errea)