BRANDING: Design choice - Celtic shirt

Lawson Muncaster, Vice-president, global ad sales, Metro International, Marketing, Thursday, 22 May 2003, 12:00am,

I first felt the passion for Celtic's distinctive green-and-white hooped shirts as a six-year-old boy when my father took me to my first game at the club's Parkhead ground. Since then I have been a dedicated fan of the Bhoys.

Of course for a club with strong Catholic roots, green holds a special significance. In those days the green-and-white bands held such sway that the players' numbers were uniquely stuck on their white shorts so as not to subvert the purity of the hoops worn proudly on their backs.

I, too, proudly wore my pint-sized strip at every opportunity - with a '2' on my thigh and all.

My family think I have taken my passion too far - I now work for Metro International, whose 17 daily Metro newspapers in cities across mainland Europe all happily sport emerald green mastheads.

The look of the famous shirts has evolved over the years around the green-and-white theme first suggested by the club's founder, Brother Walfrid, in 1888.

The onset of sponsorship, branding and TV has had its effect. The most poignant change for me has been to the hoops themselves: with different designs they have got wider, I think to meet the demands of TV picture clarity. This is understandable, as a huge television audience will surely have watched Celtic in the UEFA Cup Final in Seville.

This article was first published on Marketing