"Team in white"
Curiously when I went to see England v. Argentina recently at Twickenham they were in purple. This was explained to all present through a handy A3 sheet of purple paper on each seat, which said that it was something to do with the tracksuits being purple back in the eighties?

England played diabolically and soon everyone attending discovered that making those purple sheets of paper into paper aeroplanes and throwing them down onto the grass was actually much more interesting than watching the game.

Every now and again someone would get one onto the pitch, the crowd would spot it descending, starting a rising "...ooooOOOOOO!!" chant that culminated in a huge cheer when the plane made a gentle landing on the play area. In fact the loudest applause of the whole game was for the person right at the top of the stadium who managed to get theirs though the posts, thus putting Jonny Wilkinson to shame.

Towards the end of the first half an announcement came over the tannoy: "would everyone please stop throwing objects onto the pitch. This is an international sporting event, please stop throwing objects onto the pitch."

Of course you can imagine what happened next. After a perfect comic pause, hundreds, nay thousands of purple paper planes sailed down through the sky towards the pitch below, looking like a purple blizzard or some bizarre childrens' reenactment of the Battle of Britain.

The players just stood and watched in resignation, understanding that this was a pitch-perfect comment on their performance.

Made me proud to be English.
( pixel_fucker is going to need a bigger brush, Fri 5 Feb 2010, 13:57, 1 reply)

There are two reasons that England played in purple that day
1. It's a long-standing tradition that in rugby the home side wears a different strip when required due to a colour clash. It is the hospitable thing to do after all.

2. Having decided that, despite it never being a problem in the previous ten or so games between the two sides, white is indistinguishable from blue and white hoops, somebody saw an opportunity to sell more merchandise.
(Vice Admiral Sir Charles Cockbrush KCB MBE DSO, who is finding it increasingly difficult to log into b3ta.com wants to duck your aunt and kick your puppy, Fri 5 Feb 2010, 14:45, closed)

Well it did appear thus to me...
...but there was a large amount of gumpf about the "return to royal purple" or somesuch bollocks.

In fact it was much like this press release from Nike:
www.rfu.com/News/2009/October/News%20Articles/291009_Eng_Change_Kit.aspx
( pixel_fucker is going to need a bigger brush, Fri 5 Feb 2010, 17:55, closed)