The five worst jumpers in AFL/VFL history

This is a little later than I promised, I know. It’s been difficult to narrow it down to the five worst jumpers, so the honorable mention category is going to be a little bloated. This article has been born from my look at every club’s jumpers in the competition, which you can read part one of here and part two here. There have been some really terrible jumpers in the game, but unsurprisingly, most of these jumpers have been promotional jumpers, or used in the pre-season. There are more promotional jumpers than ever in the AFL, but not one of the jumpers mentioned in this article will be worn this season, or has been worn in this decade. Basically all of the jumpers were worn in the late-90s, when teams were catiously stepping into marketing and promotional outfits. When clubs were less secure than they are now, meaning North Melbourne and St Kilda could essentially have their jumpers bought for a game or two. When teams tried to stand out from the others as the competition wasn’t the complete marketing and economical power it is now, so teams tried their hardest to connect with fans. I can’t imagine any of this worked that well, but these clubs had to try something.
As before, these jumpers mostly came from footyjumpers.com, the endless resource for everything that was worn in the past 150 odd years.

Honorable Mentions

The oldest jumper mentioned in this piece, by about 60 years, is the 1935 Footscray home jumper. The Footscray jumper is a great, historical outfit. Why they decided to change things up in 1935 and wear a clown style outfit is a mystery. Luckily, those jumpers were destroyed in a dry-cleaning incident. Hopefully it was deliberate sabotage.
Hawthorn undoubtedly have had the worst time trying to wear suitable pre-season jumpers. Their 1997-99 jumper was horrid, but at least it was a football guernsey. Hawthorn’s 2000 pre-season jumper, with sleeves, was a rugby outfit, and an ugly one at that. The lighting look would have made for a bad high school field hockey outfit in the mid-1990s, but for a professional AFL team, it was terrible. At half-time of one of their games, the Hawthorn players complained it was too hot in the sleeves so they ran back out after the long break with the same jumper, but without sleeves. A pure debacle.
Perhaps Collingwood’s growing skepticism towards wearing clash jumpers grew from their awful run with pre-season jumpers in the 1990s, the worst of which is definitely the 1996-97 Magpie jumper. The cartoon Magpie on the front wouldn’t have resulted in a great jumper had it been put on a traditional guernsey, but with the awful barcode design it resulted in a really bad look.
The first upset, with the Pura Light Start St Kilda yellow not cracking the top five. It isn’t a good jumper, don’t get me wrong, but it isn’t as awful of a crime as those below. Yellow was a part of St Kilda’s look after World War I as their black-red-white colours represented Germany, so it isn’t a complete outrage they included yellow on their jumper, and it certainly stands out from opposition teams. It was intended as a clash jumper, but suspiciously the clash issues subsided within a few years. It’s still a comical jumper to look back on but there was a little purpose about it.

5. The Fitzroy Checkered Border

This was just an honest mistake. Fitzroy tried to change things up during the pre-seasons of 1995-96 by chucking out a terrible jumper. The Fitzroy crest of the home jumper was replaced with a lion, the basis for the Brisbane Lion jumper, the backing was changed to blue and the diagonal stripes down the side carry the pattern of an oversized lollypop.

4. The Hi-Vis Kangaroo

The Roos certainly weren’t going to be lost on the field on round 21, 2000. Coming together with the phone company Orange, North avoided a clash with Collingwood by wearing an orange version of their away jumper, then disregarded the avoidance by wearing black shorts and black socks. On the back of a day out from Nick Davis, Collingwood kicked five goals to one in the final quarter to win by 18 points and the orange jumpers weren’t worn again, but they can never possibly be lost. Like an apprentice on his first day at the job site, those jumpers stuck out.

3. The 3D Docker Anchor

The crooked 3D anchor, the lifted number crest on the back, the green-red-white stripe down the center, this was all wrong. Why the anchor was crooked, I’m not sure. It certainly distinguished itself from the original home jumper – which I am almost a fan of – but there was just nothing good to say about this jumper. Combined with the inevitable white shorts the away team had to wear, this was breaking all kinds of fashion laws.

2. The Psychedelic Vomit Eagle

I really don’t understand this. It’s like whoever was in charge of the outfits for the club was messing around on power point, trying to get the perfect WordArt, flicked their mouse to the colour finder screen and became enamored with the colour fade shown on the screen. Where the cyan blue on the back came from, who knows, why the Eagle sort of camouflages itself into the jumper, who knows, how this lasted for three seasons, who knows. It’s a modern day mystery.

1. The Hawthorn Diamond Studded Jockey

It had to be. There is no more disgraceful jumper in history. It really doesn’t have any ties to Hawthorn at all, the blue back doesn’t make sense and the diamonds are awful. This jumper was like some kind of triumph in a quest to wear something that is as far removed from a teams jumper as possible. It is extremely humorous though.