Welcome back to Part 2 of our “Dressed for the Season: Saint Patrick’s Day.” If you missed Part 1, which ran earlier today, click here.
by Kary Klismet
Welcome back, me fellow Watchers o’ the Unis! Here’s hoping you’ve had time to digest Part 1 of this list of the best Irish-themed sports uniforms (not to mention that hearty full Irish breakfast I recommended). There’s no call for dallyin’, so let’s dive right into our top ten!
Taking the pitch for the first time in 2023, Kerry F.C. is quite the newcomer compared to most of the teams in these rankings. This soccer team in Ireland’s second-tier professional league has nevertheless made a strong impression on a couple of different fronts.
For starters, their crest features one of the great symbols of Irish identity – the Celtic harp. Additionally, their home kits for last season did perhaps the best job of any team in these rankings showcasing an impressive variety of shades of green. It almost looks like they’re covered in confetti thrown during a spirited St. Patrick’s Day parade.
It was inevitable that a large cross-section of this list would include teams that use shamrocks as part of their names or visual identities (or both). What’s unique among the teams in these rankings is the Shamrock Rovers’ placement of “Shamrock” as their club moniker rather than as their mascot.
Regardless of where they place it in their name, Ireland’s most successful professional soccer team is unmistakably linked with the shamrock. It’s integral to their crest, and it serves as the focal point of glorious green-and-white hooped garb that extends not only to the jersey, but to the socks, too. No one’s going to pinch these Rovers for not wearing enough green on St. Patrick’s Day!
No city has milked its connection to its Irish heritage for sports team names better than Boston, Massachusetts. We already mentioned among our honorable mentions that a myriad of teams use “Shamrocks” as their mascot, and many of them have come from the Boston area. The best of them all, undoubtedly, was a pro football team from the 1930s who played in one of several defunct circuits to call themselves the American Football League.
The Shamrocks wore green and gold, although with only black and white photography to serve as evidence of their existence, the precise shades seem to be open to interpretation by colorizers and replica jersey creators. Even so, the shamrock logos on their jerseys and helmets make these uniforms look sharp, no matter what colors they’re paired with.
Scotland has a surprising number of teams with Irish-themed names. (Don’t be surprised if you come across another before we’re done.) Maybe it’s the kinship the Scots feel for their Gaelic cousins.
Hailing from Edinburgh, Hibernian takes its name from the Latin term for Ireland. It’s the lovely lilt of that name that places them firmly in these rankings, alongside a crest that includes an Irish harp and kits with some of the best socks on the list. They’d look spectacular paired with a traditional Irish kilt! And yes, I know that kilts are originally Scottish, but they have a place in Irish culture, too. And what better way to salute both sides of Hibs’ identity than to find that convergence?
I know you’ve all been waiting for a green-clad basketball team with an Irish-themed identity, so here you go! Not who you were expecting? Well, try to give the Leprechauns, a Lebanon, Indiana-based semi-pro team in The Basketball League, a fair shake of the shillelagh anyway.
The Leprechauns earn points not only for their solid logo, but for their shamrock-inspired wordmark and uniform trim that evokes a Celtic triquetra design. They even have rainbow alternates (although the base of the uniform is, unfortunately, BFBS). All things considered, we haven’t seen such well-dressed leprechauns since, uhh… Patrick O’Shea in the thirteenth slot on this list!
Sticking with the leprechaun motif, let’s hop the Indiana-Michigan border to Royal Oak, a suburb of Detroit, to visit the only baseball team on our list. The Royal Oak Leprechauns are a summer collegiate team in the Northwoods League who fully embrace their Irish namesake in a way that easily earns them their top 5 ranking.
Whether wearing home whites with sublimated shamrocks, green road jerseys, or either version of their very dapper alternates, the Leprechauns always look like, well, leprechauns! With caps, logo, and mascot to match, all Royal Oak needs to do is sell Lucky Charms at their concession stand to complete the theme.
With their on-the-nose team name and logos, their green and white color scheme, and a history of success that has made them one of the biggest brands in pro sports, there was little doubt that the Boston Celtics would find their way onto this list. The only question was which variation of their classic uniforms would represent the franchise.
For my money, the most “Irish” of all the Celtics’ uniforms were the ones they wore for their first three years of existence. Whether worn with sleeves or tank tops, the shamrocks on either side of the shorts are what put them on top (o’ the mornin’). (Sorry, I couldn’t resist!)
Boston revived these as City Edition Earned Edition Statement Edition, err, throwback uniforms for the 2021-22 season, and they still look timeless to my eyes. Now if only we could convince Nike to quit fixing what’s not broken and adopt these as part of the Celtics’ regular instead of all those other tiresome alternates they’ve trotted out in recent years…
Boston may be the basketball team everyone thinks about when they hear the name “Celtics,” but another team from an East Coast city with a large Irish population beat them to the pot of gold by a good 30 years. A barnstorming team that played all over the country from 1914-39, the Original Celtics nonetheless considered New York home and frequently played in Madison Square Garden when not on the road.
They wore several different versions of their uniforms over the years, all centered around a large shamrock emblazoned across the front of their jerseys. The original photos are largely black and white, of course, but fellow comm-uni-ty member Jorge Cruz snapped some color images of the team’s jerseys at the Basketball Hall of Fame that are too good not to share.
The prominence of the Irish symbolism on their uniforms gives the Original Celtics a slight edge over their Beantown-based successors, even if they do get a demerit for adding singer Kate Smith’s initials to their logo in an early example of uni advertising (#nouniads). Kate’s stirring renditions of “Danny Boy” and “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,” though, help to earn them back their Celtic cred.
If we’re talking about teams with Celtic-themed names (and, for the third entry in a row, we clearly are), one organization moves to the front of that line – the Celtic Football Club of Glasgow, Scotland. Founded by a Catholic priest in 1887 to improve the lot of Irish immigrants in the city, Celtic has earned a devoted following not only in Glasgow, but among the Irish community worldwide.
Famous for the green and white hoops on their home shirts for most of their history, Celtic pairs their classic look with a crest featuring a four-leaf clover – a unique look among the myriad teams that use the more common three-leaf shamrock to assert their Irish character. But the four-leaf clover has its own place as a symbol of the “luck of the Irish,” and few teams have enjoyed the good fortune that Celtic has, with the storied success of the men’s side encompassing 54 Scottish league titles and the first European championship won by a British-based team in 1967.
When I started my research for this list, I figured a certain Catholic school from South Bend, Indiana, would land on it somewhere. With a logo that personifies their team name almost a little too perfectly and a sideline mascot that brings it to life, Notre Dame’s sports teams have carved out a well-established position as the flagship athletics program of the Irish-American community, even in their official school colors of navy blue and gold. But it’s when they add green to their uniform mix that the Fighting Irish most emphatically wear their allegiances on their sleeves – figuratively and sometimes literally!
I could have chosen any number of Notre Dame’s sports teams to represent them in this spot and they all would have made a strong case for the top spot. Heck, the football team alone, with its history of incorporating green uniforms into its rotation dating back to 1921, had plenty of uniform options to choose from. None of their uniform sets, however, captured that bold Irish pride quite like the ones they wore from 1960-62, when the shamrock on the sides of the helmets wasn’t just an occasional gimmick, but their standard look.
Joe Kuharich introduced shamrocks to Notre Dame’s helmets when he returned to his alma mater as head coach in 1959. The odd upside down shamrock decal used in his first year gave way to a more conventional design the following year, kicking off these lovely lids’ three-year run, accompanied by either navy blue home jerseys, white road jerseys, or green alternate tops.
Unfortunately, Kuharich’s ouster after a lackluster 17-23 record relegated these uniforms to little more than an historical footnote. But for a brief stretch in the early 1960s, the Fighting Irish looked as Irish as they ever have.
Here’s wishing the luck of the Irish to you all! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go drink a half and half while I listen to the Pogues and the Dubliners play “The Irish Rover.” Sláinte!
Your hard work is appreciated here, Kary, and I get the need for an Irish connection. Still, Paul’s countdown was more up my alley, perhaps because green was the day in, day out color for those teams.
To each their own, Walter. As I said in my intro, I was trying to distinguish what I was doing from Paul’s Substack piece on green uniforms, so comparing them feels kind of apples-to-oranges to me. By no means would I hold my work up as something to rival Paul’s. But if you choose to make that comparison, that’s your prerogative. It’s no surprise that someone would find my work wanting in that instance. But in any event, I guess our common ground in all this our mutual high regard for Paul’s work. Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you!
OhMyGod… Sportscaster Cards – I now feel a little old. It was a subscription based deal where you got a few cards every month… but I am surprised I would have bought these in 7th grade. They came with a box you kept them in. link People are actually getting them graded. link
Here is the last series on TCDB. link
I would say this may be first foray into collecting cards – but I have actual memories of trading/buying Wacky Packs from Mark Buttery in 4th grade.
The Gretzky Sports Casters card probably pre date the Topps / OPC rookie card. Those cards were awesome.
My vote would be for the Butte Irish hockey team, uniforms, logo.
link
Good one! I came across them during my research and they were definitely in the mix to make the list. The main reason they missed the cut was that one of their logos (link) is blatantly poached from Ireland’s national soccer team (link) and the other is a bit… intense (link) for my tastes. But they have a fun Irish identity nonetheless, and it certainly has a cool historical connection to the Irish immigrants who settled in the area and worked the mines (link).
oh man, check the repairs on that #60 jersey.
Great work for the articles, but… are we really going with “AI”-generated images for headers now?
I thought the same thing. If that’s what it is, I’m really disappointed in UW for that choice.
to me both dressed for the season articles seem to be AI. now, that is annoying but also i get the feeling that UW isn’t a multi-million dollar a month type of enterprise, so i don’t mind it here for the sake of minimizing effort when the contributors have other jobs etc
Rob, Sean, and Jem, allow me to address your comments collectively. I’ll address Jem’s speculation about AI written content first. Let me be clear that not one word – not one letter or punctuation mark – of the written content that has appeared in these Dressed for the Season articles is AI-generated. It’s all the result of hours upon hours of research and effort on my part and is purely the work of my own hand.
Frankly, I find it disappointing and insulting that someone would call my writing AI. I work hard to generate original content for Uni Watch – frequently at the request of both Paul and Phil – and I have done it on a fully volunteer basis. I don’t get paid a dime for any of this. It’s all been because I have loved reading Uni Watch for over 20 years now and have been grateful to find ways to contribute to a comm-uni-ty that has meant so much to me.
To Rob and Sean: as far as AI imagery goes, I’ve made no secret that I’ve used AI to generate some of the images that have been used in some of the Dressed for the Season stories. I’ve tried to do it with humor and a slightly skeptical tone to acknowledge the uneasy relationship I have with it. While I’ve always found myself disdainful of AI-generated text, I’ve come to more of a grudging acceptance of AI image generation, largely based on my needs in connection with the work I’ve done on this series.
Yes, the images used for the headers for both parts of these articles were AI-generated. The reason I used AI is that, despite my best efforts to find the precise images on the internet I was looking for to support these stories, they simply didn’t exist. I looked through countless clip art, stock photos, and other image sources, and it became obvious that there weren’t many options to illustrate the stories the way I wanted without illustrating them myself or find some way to have them illustrated in an affordable manner.
While I’d like to think I have some innate artistic ability, it’s a muscle I haven’t had much opportunity to exercise since my teenage years. And I don’t have any training in artistic media beyond the pencils, pens, and paper I used back then. I’m clueless when it comes to using computer programs like Photo Shop.
So what does one do when one wants to put together an image in a reasonably short amount of time? Well, there are a number of free AI image generators available, and Microsoft Bing happens to have one of them. For what it’s worth, I spend a lot of time tweaking my inputs to the image generator to get the least AI-looking results I can. Maybe that says something about the inherent limits of AI-generated imagery, but I would be happy to show you the images I rejected to show that I do have a sense of discernment about what I’m trying to do here.
In conclusion, I’ll circle back to something that Jem said. You’re right! UW isn’t a “multi-million dollar a month type of enterprise.” As I said above, I don’t make a cent off of what I contribute here, and I do have a “day job” (which, based on the reception today’s article have received, I definitely should not quit!).
So, Rob, Sean, and Jem, what do you suggest I do instead? I’ll never use AI for my writing, but do you have recommendations for handling the demands of supporting this very visual medium without turning to AI images? Are you artists? Are you willing to contribute your talents to support this comm-uni-ty for the same compensation that I am? If so, by all means, I would love your help! (And I mean that sincerely. Let me know, and I’ll have Phil get us in touch with one another!)
But if you can’t offer that kind of help artistically, then please give me whatever ideas you have of how I should do it differently. I’m all ears! In the meantime, I encourage all of you to offer your own contributions to Uni Watch if you can do it better. I would genuinely cheer on your success!
i was talking about the images only, which are obviously AI and if you read my comment, you’d know i was very much ok with that.. the writing always feels authentic, if that helps clarify where i was coming from. and i hope you know i appreciate it.
i know the www gives you criticism, but please know you all are doing a great job and that every lil internet comment shouldn’t derail or distract you, thanks for your continued commitment to making our lives a little better every day
Jem, thank you for your follow up. I obviously read your comments as an extension of the others in terms of the criticisms and didn’t appreciate the nuances where you were drawing a distinction between your opinion and those of the other commenters. Although, in my defense, your choice of the word “annoying” did inform my initial interpretation! ;^)
Nevertheless, I appreciate your clarification and your kind words. I’m glad to know that you enjoyed the content, and I’m grateful for your grace and understanding on the parts (i.e., the AI header images) that may not be your cup of tea. Thanks again, Jem!
I enjoy your writing and your pieces very much. Please keep up the good work.
Thank you, Michael! I am grateful for your support!
Respectfully (and I really appreciate your thoughtful replies), I wonder if your perspective on AI image generation might be different if you created graphics. I understand your disdain for AI-written content, likely because as someone who writes eloquent and thoughtful, well-researched pieces, you see the corners it cuts, how inauthentic it is and sounds, how much it takes from actual human work and copies without attribution. I would argue that AI-generated images are not substantially different: they are visibly off (see how many people noticed the AI on both articles before you confirmed it), take from actual artists, and cut corners. I realize that you use it because you have a specific image in mind, but that rationale is very easy to flip and apply to AI-written articles. Although no one (here at least) was accusing your written content of being AI, I completely understand why even a hint of that insinuation put you on the defensive. You put a ton of work into these! But it’s also a pretty natural thing to at least wonder if accompanied by an image generated by AI, in my opinion. Most AI-generated images I encounter online are accompanied by AI text as well, just all cut corners throughout.
Sincerely, thank you for considering various perspectives on this issue and for so many wonderful posts. I always look forward to Dressed for the Season around holidays. This is just intended as food for thought. Your “just do it yourself then” point is well-taken. My suggestion if the art you’re looking for is not out there, as others have made, is using an image of one of the teams from the article, as most pieces on this site do. If not, I have somewhat limited ability myself and can’t always commit to doing so, but I would be happy to connect and at least try to make images for you for future posts. But of course, the decision ultimately lies with you.
Thanks for the thoughtful discourse, C! I really appreciate your input on this. There are so many angles and variables to consider in the new world of AI. Considering things from the standpoint of professionals in the fields of art and graphic design is certainly something I’m willing to add into the mix of this fairly uncharted territory.
There’s a bigger discussion looming on the horizon about all of this, and I’m guessing this isn’t the last time these issues are debated in the comments section of Uni Watch (not to mention various other forums). But I suppose it’s not realistic to expect that we can unpack all of them in this particular thread – let alone solve them!
For now, I will say that I am listening to those voices who may have reasons to disagree with my measured use of AI images for particular stories. I’ll freely admit that I would prefer to use original, human-created art to AI-generated images whenever possible. So if you or other members of the Uni Watch comm-uni-ty are willing to collaborate on a targeted basis, I would love to take you up on that. I may reach out to Phil in the future to facilitate that connection. Thanks for the offer, C! And thanks again for the civil conversation on a particularly complicated topic!
The picture of the 1936 Boston Shamrocks is accurate, that’s my grandfather George “Gigi” Kenneally in the fedora & overcoat on he left. He was Coach, GM and ultimately the owner of the team. The other gentleman in the top coat is Larry Kelley the Yale End that won the Heisman Trophy in 1936. Although he agreed to join the Shamrocks and came up to Boston a contract never materialized. the Shamrocks were favorites to join the NFL and Kenneally used all his old contacts to stage games with teams like the Steelers, but the Great Hurricane of 1938 bankrupted the team.
What a cool story, Philip! Thanks for sharing it! Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you and your family!
I hate Notre Dame, but damn if those unis are not sweet.
I know, right? I pretty much feel the same!
I think the green jerseys they wore the Bush Push game are the perfect shade of green to complement their gold elements and should be the only shade they use.
Nice work, Kary! Personally, my list would start with Eriskay FC (link) and the Toronto St. Pats. The only way the St Pats could be more St. Patrick’s Day would be if they wore blue instead of green! As for Eriskay, nobody wears green hoops better, and they live and play on an isolated rock that juts into the sea north of Ireland. Given the historical Patrick’s dealings with Irish slavers plying the same waters, as well as the later history of Vikings raiding Irish church establishments from the same Scottish islands, Eriskay has the stronger connection for me than, say, Celtic in Glasgow, or anyone else wearing green hoops on the pitch.
Thanks, Scott! I always value your well-informed and well-considered input!
I love the deep pull on Eriskay FC! You’ve just educated me on a team I didn’t know existed until now! Their uniforms are very Celtic-like, which a little googling led me to discover is no accident: (link). A great suggestion for this list!
As for St. Patrick and blue, I fully acknowledge that I love a good blue coat of arms with a gold Irish harp on it (link). With that said, my recollection is that the association of blue and St. Patrick tends to be based on his veneration in the Anglican tradition. I don’t know the nuances and history of the Irish-British relationship well enough to know whether using blue for St. Patrick would be controversial among Irish Catholics, but I’m all for expanding the color scheme that we think of in connection with St. Patrick’s Day!
Yeah, there’s a lot of muddled history with colors associated both with St. Patrick and with Irish nationalism. The best evidence I’m aware of points to sky blue predating the Church of Ireland, and it seems that traditional Patrick iconography also influenced the design of the EU flag. But even if modern opinion about the question may be misguided, it is probably best to avoid confronting strongly held opinions if possible.
Call me completely biased but I would include nothing but Notre Dame uniforms plus the Celtic Football Club. Yes, not even the Irish or Northern Irish national teams. As of the origin of both Celtic and Hibs, they startes out as clubs for Irish immigrants in Glashow and Edinburgh, hence the Emerald connection.
Interesting opinion, Ingmar! There’s no doubt that Notre Dame could have made the list based on any number of uniforms combinations worn not only by its football team but also by its other sports teams. Could they have filled out the entire roster of spots on this list if I’d chosen to go that route? Probably! But it’s fun to highlight all the other teams out there with Irish-themed names and identities!
Totally agree with you, Kary. I was just getting carried away in my Irish fandom. Your list is very good. And not just because the ND Irish are included. Honorable Mention: the high school team where Lebron James played. St Vincent-St Mary Fighting Irish.
A fun rabbit hole to go down on this theme is GAA club identities. They range from slightly more general gaelic revival and republican theming like Na Fianna, Eirins Isle, Éire Óg, Eireann Go Bragh (all genuine club names) to straight up named for nationalist leaders like Pádraic Pearses and Wolfe Tones.
Thanks, Padday! It was a fun story to research, not least of which because of all the fascinating GAA clubs I learned about along the way. Truly every one of those clubs – even the ones whose color schemes don’t involve green – is far more authentically Irish than some semi-pro basketball team in the American Midwest that calls itself the Leprechauns!