Given the weekend that’s in it, we might as well focus on the 40 shades of green.

Well, not that many, to be fair – but the 1996, 2006 and 2014 All-Ireland senior football finals stand out as examples when the colour was too prevalent among both competing sides.

To give Meath manager Seán Boylan credit, after the drawn 1996 decider against Mayo, he noticed how his players had given the ball away in unusual circumstances more than once because they thought they were passing to a teammate.

Meath wore gold change jerseys for the ill-tempered replay and were rewarded with victory.

Ten years on, Kerry and Mayo played each other with both wearing their usual kits – despite the fact that Mayo had worn red in the decider two years previously – in 2014 the Kingdom and Donegal were also able to ignore that their strips were deemed to clash in recent meetings.

While team colours essentially exist to tell the teams apart, attachment to those colours can grow to the point where changing, even for a game, is seen as a sign of weakness. Jamie Wall, one of the top up-and-coming coaches in hurling and a former Cork dual underage player, takes the opposite view.

I’m convinced that Kieran Donaghy’s goal for Kerry against Donegal in 2014, when Paul Durcan took a short kickout straight to him, came about because the GAA had decided that neither county had to change

“People would say, ‘Surely you can tell the difference,’ and from the stand, it might be fairly straightforward,” he says, “but it’s not like a PlayStation game where you’re controlling the player but have a third-person view.

“When you’re playing a game, you’re doing so with your peripherals. Especially with the way hurling has gone, with runners off the shoulder and all of these things, you might only be seeing a flash of colour.

“I’m convinced that Kieran Donaghy’s goal for Kerry against Donegal in 2014, when Paul Durcan took a short kickout straight to him, came about because the GAA had decided that neither county had to change and so they were both in green and gold.

You don’t take an extra second to make a decision and I’m always of the opinion that, if one player makes a mistake based on something that’s utterly avoidable – something that someone has neglected to sort – then that’s one mistake too many.

“Some people say, ‘We’re not changing unless we have to,’ but I feel that, even if there’s a chance of somebody giving up a score, you should avoid it.”

Thankfully, it does appear that things are changing and more logic is being applied. In the All-Ireland minor and U20 hurling finals last year between Cork and Galway, one team wore white jerseys in each, while the infamous recent meeting of Armagh and Tyrone saw the Orchard County in all-black gear to avoid a red/orange mish-mash.

The Tipperary Michael Hogan commemorative jersey, here on Conor Sweeney, was worn by players in the 2020 Munster final, in an empty Pairc Uí Chaoimh. The jerseys bore the colours of the Grangemockler club – similar to that worn on Bloody Sunday. \ Eóin Noonan/Sportsfile

There’s still a way to go – Dublin have launched alternative jerseys in the past few years, but have worn them against non-blue teams – but the growing market for replicas can help drive the usage of non-default kits.

In the recent past, Cork, Limerick, Mayo and Tipperary are among those who have worn commemorative jerseys which were very well received and this coming weekend will see another reach back into the past, only without the commercial aspect added.

The Tipperary Michael Hogan commemorative jersey, here on Conor Sweeney, was worn by players in the 2020 Munster final, in an empty Pairc Uí Chaoimh. The jerseys bore the colours of the Grangemockler club – similar to that worn on Bloody Sunday. \ Eóin Noonan/Sportsfile

The jerseys will not be on public sale, but supporters will have a chance to win a jersey signed by the team in a charity raffle with all funds raised going to Women’s Aid and combatting domestic violence in Ireland.

Going through the eras

The nostalgia pendulum is always swinging, staying 30 years behind the times. In the 1990s, for example, there was something of a 60s revival, while in the current age the 90s are having a renaissance.

The phenomenon is rooted in the fact that the creative and marketing people making decisions now are in a sense reliving their youth by revisiting and refreshing the popular trends from back then.

That’s not the exact reason that some of this weekend’s Allianz League games will look like time capsules, but the end effect will be the same.

It was in 1992 that the insurance company Church & General took over from Royal Liver Assurance as the sponsors of the national leagues.

When German giant Allianz acquired Church & General in the late 1990s, the name of the competitions changed accordingly, but it was still being supported by the same organisation and so the 30th anniversary is being celebrated this year.

As part of that, Saturday night’s football Division 1 clash between Tyrone and Mayo and two of Sunday’s hurling clashes, Galway-Clare and Wexford-Cork, will see the players wearing replicas of what their 1992 counterparts donned.

Perhaps surprisingly, as of now the word is that the shirts won’t be going on sale and they are only being produced for the matchday squads, but one wonders if a high demand from supporters would lead to a change of mind on that front.

The market for retro jerseys is a burgeoning one.

Previously in these pages, we featured an interview with David Morrissey of Órga Retro while there are a number of other competitors in the field, not least O’Neills, who hold a near-monopoly on the kitting out of counties.

It reflects what has been seen in soccer in England, to an extent, where clubs change kit every season and so some fans have gravitated towards the older tops, which can never go out of date (again).

If this weekend’s experiment goes down well – and we would expect that it will – then it might be that it becomes a semi-regular thing. In Australian rules football, there is a ‘heritage round’ each year where teams wear reproductions of older ‘guernseys’ (quite why they named their tops after a different Channel Island to us is a mystery, but there could be a link to ‘geansaí’) and something similar here could work, especially if aligned to a charitable fundraising push. We shall wait and see.