The evolution of Newcastle Jets kits

In the coming days, we reveal our 2021/22 playing kits and anticipation is growing to see the return of the Gold.

With that in mind, we decided to sift back through our archives to relive the journey our jersey and playing kits have taken since the beginning of the A-League.

There’s been gold, red and blue, white and black, green and cinnamon, and even some camo – tell us your favourite!

GALLERY: See the full history of our kits

OUR START IN GOLD

When the league first started in 2005, and the Newcastle Jets were born, the Club bravely introduced an almost completely gold jersey, accompanied by navy shorts.

This was particularly intriguing due to the lack of gold used in Club branding, not just in world football, but world sport.

Thanks to success on the pitch too, the jersey and colour instantly became iconic for football in Australia, as well as our away kit which featured a predominantly white jersey with a trim of gold on the sleeves and white shorts and socks.

However, it was long before the away kit was altered to feature more gold. The sleeves received an upgrade, and the shorts became gold too.

This would become the kit that we would don for the famous 2007/08 A-League Grand Final victory.

Later that year, our W-League team joined the fray. Like the men, they proudly shone in gold for their jerseys, however their shorts slightly differed.

While the A-League side mainly wore navy, our women wore a touch of blue while their jerseys hardly featured any other colour but the gold.

In 2009 our A-League team featured in the AFC Asian Champions League after our success the year before, and marked the occasion with special playing kits featuring interesting variations from our usual style.

Trims of red were introduced on the sleeves to reflect the large portion of our Club’s logo, while in the league, it was also the first season we sometimes mix-n-matched our kits due to possible clashes.

Throughout many games of that season, our side would wear their white away shorts with that of our gold jersey, instead of with the new navy away top.

THE EMERGENCE OF RED & BLUE (AND GREEN?)

The 2010/11 season proved to be the last time we’d see the Gold, with the introduction of red and blue jerseys in an attempt to tie the Club in with Newcastle’s rugby league colours following new ownership.

In similar fashion to the Newcastle Knights, our kits were red and blue striped, with blue shorts and socks, however touches of gold were still reflected.

Our away kits caught attentions too, as for the first time we donned a white and black striped playing kit, similar to that of Newcastle United in England.

While our colours had majorly transformed since the 2005 days, there was still a distinct effort to celebrate and commemorate our history – not just the Jets history, but the history of football in our region.

For the 2013/14 season, our new red and blue home kits were complemented by the choice of an emerald green, cinnamon brown and white away strip, the same colours used by the town’s first professional football club, KB United back in the late 70s and early 80s.

Those colours were used for the following season too with slight amendments, before reverting back to a traditional white.

Gold also came back in 2015, but as an alternate jersey, however, most of our home kits since then made sure to include the original colour in some manner, whether it be slight trims on sleeves, pin-stripes, or even just the colour of our kit numbers.

Recently, fans have enjoyed the white and gold away kit in 2018, that possessed a rather similar vibe to the one worn ten years ago on our Championship winning day.

Although blue has dominated our home kits since then, there have been touches of red, particularly across our AFC Asian Champions League jerseys.

GALLERY: See the full history of our kits

The special kits contained red stripes, both vertically and diagonally, with the former style also being used in the 2019/20 season.

THE SPECIAL COLOURS

One shade that our teams hadn’t featured in until 2018, was black. And not just a little bit of black, we’re talking the whole thing.

It was a bold choice but the fans took to it as our third kit for that season, and featured as our main jersey for our FFA Cup run.

And while we’re looking at our history of kits, it would of course be remiss of us not to mention our commemorative RAAF kits.

These have not just featured fighter jets on the front, but we’ve also draped ourselves in camo as part of the fan-favourite day at home. It truly is a sight to see Jets flying over the stadium, before the team flies on the field.