Shirt swapping or jersey swapping is a tradition in sports where players of opposing teams swap jerseys with each other at the end of a match as a sign of mutual respect. [1]
Shirt swapping or jersey swapping is a tradition in sports where players of opposing teams swap jerseys with each other at the end of a match as a sign of mutual respect. [1]
Shirt swapping is a long-held tradition in association football.
The first shirt swap is believed to have taken place at a match between France and England on May 14, 1931; the French team lost and asked to keep the English team's shirts as a memento. [2] [3]
A further example took place at the 1954 FIFA World Cup. [3]
In the 1970 FIFA World Cup, Pelé and Bobby Moore swapped shirts. [2] [4] Following this, the tradition spread to other individual players. [5]
Although habitually done at the conclusion of matches, shirt swaps have also occurred at half time; examples include Mario Balotelli swapping shirts with Pepe in 2014, Eden Hazard swapping shits with Ángel Di María in 2016, and Mohamed Ali Camara swapping shirts with Erling Haaland in 2023. [6]
Jersey swapping also occurs in the National Football League, [7] where it has become common since the mid-2010s, getting the tradition from association football. [8] [9]
During his final season in the National Basketball Association in 2018–19, basketball player Dwyane Wade exchanged jerseys after every game with a player on the opposing team. [10]
Jersey swapping has also occurred in Major League Baseball. [11] [12] Joe Kelly swapped his jersey with a Mariachi musician for his charro jacket in celebration of his Mexican heritage and wore it to the Los Angeles Dodgers' championship trip to the White House following their victory in the 2020 World Series. [13]
In Australian rules football, guernsey swapping was common in grand finals from as early as the 1940s until around the 1980s. [14] [15] [16] In the Victorian Football League, this infamously meant that photographs of St Kilda celebrating its only premiership in 1966 featured captain Darrel Baldock hoisting the trophy wearing a Collingwood guernsey; St Kilda later doctored the photo to put him back in a St Kilda guernsey in murals and promotional material it created with the image. The VFL banned the captains from swapping guernseys after 1966, [17] and the custom ultimately fell out of vogue. Decades later, long-retired players often handed swapped guernseys back to their original wearers. [18]
Politicians sometimes swap shirts as acts of diplomacy, often before their respective teams play against each other. One instance was Boris Johnson swapping national team jerseys with Juan Carlos Varela before their countries faced each other in the 2018 FIFA World Cup. [19]
| Competition | Matches | Players | Description | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1966 VFL Season | 1966 VFL Grand Final | Collingwood vs St Kilda |  |  | As of 2024, the 1966 premiership is St Kilda's only VFL/AFL premiership, and there is an infamous photo of St Kilda's Darrel Baldock raising the premiership cup wearing Collingwood's Des Tuddenham's guernsey. [20] |
| 1970 FIFA World Cup | Group stage | Brazil vs England |  Pelé |  Bobby Moore | Regarded as a symbol of fair play in association football. [4] |
| 2022 FIFA World Cup | Round of 16 | Argentina vs Australia |  Lionel Messi |  Cameron Devlin | Shirt worn in Messi's 1000th match [21] |
The Collingwood Football Club, nicknamed the Magpies or colloquially the Pies, is a professional Australian rules football club based in Melbourne, Victoria that competes in the Australian Football League (AFL), the sport's elite competition. Founded in 1892 in the Melbourne suburb of Collingwood, the club played in the Victorian Football Association (VFA) before joining seven other teams in 1896 to form the breakaway Victorian Football League (VFL), known today as the Australian Football League (AFL). Originally based at Victoria Park, Collingwood now plays home games at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and has its headquarters and training facilities at Olympic Park Oval and the AIA Centre.
The St Kilda Football Club, nicknamed the Saints, is a professional Australian rules football club based in Melbourne, Victoria. The club plays in the Australian Football League (AFL), the sport's premier league.
The Melbourne Football Club, nicknamed the Demons or colloquially the Dees, is a professional Australian rules football club based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It competes in the Australian Football League (AFL), the sport's premier competition and plays its home games at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).
1966 in sports describes the year's events in world sport.
Robert Jeffrey Harvey is an Australian rules football coach and former player. He is currently an assistant coach for the St Kilda Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL). As a player, he played his entire career with St Kilda in the AFL. Following retirement, Harvey embarked on a career in assistant coaching which has spanned across three decades, highlighted by a nine-game stint as caretaker head coach of the Collingwood Football Club in 2021.
Neil Elvis "Nicky" Winmar is a former Australian rules footballer, best known for his career for St Kilda and the Western Bulldogs in the Australian Football League (AFL), as well as South Fremantle in the West Australian Football League. An Indigenous Australian man, he was the first Aboriginal footballer to play 200 games in the AFL, and was named in the Indigenous Team of the Century in 2005. He was involved in several incidents of racial vilification during his career, and a photograph of Winmar responding to one such incident during the 1993 season has been described as one of the most memorable images in Australian sporting history.
Luke Patrick Ball is a former professional Australian rules football player who played for the St Kilda and Collingwood football clubs in the Australian Football League. From 2003 to 2009 he played 142 games for the St Kilda Football Club where he was captain in 2007 and best and fairest and All-Australian in 2005. He is one of the only players in AFL history to have played in four consecutive grand finals for two clubs; for St Kilda in 2009 and for Collingwood in 2010, the 2010 replay and 2011.
The AFL Grand Final is an Australian rules football match to determine the premiers for the Australian Football League (AFL) season. Prior to 1990 it was known as the VFL Grand Final, as the league was then known as the Victorian Football League, and both were renamed due to the national expansion of the competition. Played at the end of the finals series, the game has been held annually since 1898, except in 1924. It is traditionally staged on the afternoon of the last Saturday in September, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. As the premier match of the AFL season, it attracts one of the largest audiences in Australian sport, regularly attracting a crowd of more than 100,000 and a television audience of millions.
The 1958 VFL season was the 62nd season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season, contested by twelve clubs, ran from 12 April until 20 September, and comprised an 18-game home-and-away season, followed by a finals series involving the top four clubs.
Jason Gram is a former professional Australian rules footballer who previously played for the St Kilda Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL).
The 1967 VFL season was the 71st season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured twelve clubs, ran from 15 April until 23 September, and comprised an 18-game home-and-away season followed by a finals series featuring the top four clubs.
The 1966 VFL Grand Final was an Australian rules football game contested between the Collingwood Football Club and St Kilda Football Club, held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne on 24 September 1966. It was the 69th annual grand final of the Victorian Football League (VFL), staged to determine the premiers for the 1966 VFL season. The match, attended by 101,655 spectators, was won by St Kilda by a margin of one point, marking that club's first and only premiership victory to date.
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The 2010 AFL Grand Final was a series of two Australian rules football matches between the Collingwood Football Club and the St Kilda Football Club. They are considered the 114th and 115th grand finals of the Australian Football League ,Note 1 and were staged to determine the premiers for the 2010 AFL season. The premiership is usually decided by a single match; however, as the first grand final ended in a draw, a grand final replay was played the following week and was won by Collingwood.
Away colours or road colours are a choice of coloured clothing used in team sports. They are required to be worn by one team during a game between teams that would otherwise wear the same colours as each other, or similar colours. This change prevents confusion for officials, players, and spectators. In most sports, it is the visiting or road team that must change.
A guernsey is a type of shirt worn by Australian rules footballers. It is typically sleeveless, although long sleeves may also be worn.
Damian Carroll is an Australian rules football coach who is the Head of Development and Learning at St Kilda Football Club. He was previously Collingwood Football Club's Head of Academy. He has also served as the head coach of Victorian Football League club Box Hill from 2011 to 2013, guiding the club to the VFL Premiership in his third season in charge, before going on to serve as an assistant coach with Hawthorn.
The 1966 St Kilda Football Club season is the most successful season in St Kilda Football Club history. It currently stands as the only premiership season for St Kilda since its entry into the VFL. The Saints season in 1966 also saw St Kilda win every home game, including the Grand Final rematch in round 8.
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