My first Cork City game was an FAI Cup tie with Shamrock Rovers in 1990 (it finished 1-1, with City winning the replay), but I did not become a regular at Turner's Cross until the following season, when the club came so close to winning the Bord Gáis League of Ireland Premier Division title for the first time. We had to wait two years for that to happen, suffering an FAI Cup final loss to Bohemians in '92, but in any case I was hooked.

It's quite likely that City's outstanding strip at the time was a contributory factor in my becoming attached to the club. The same design as that worn by West Germany at the time, it was a classic design with green and red zig-zags across the white shirt, the logos of adidas and Guinness setting it off nicely. From the very beginning of my interest in football, the kits worn had been a source of great fascination and this would only grow over the subsequent years.

Luckily, being a Cork City supporter allowed for the opportunity to see plenty of variations, as the home shirt changed to green, white and red stripes, back to white, to red, then green and briefly green and white stripes before returning to green, which remains in place as the first choice.

The failure to settle upon a set identity has been a source of contention for some City fans, though it's not fairly accepted that green will be the main colour of the home kits for the foreseeable future. I don't really mind once green or white, or a combination, is favoured, with the experiment with red homes not viewed kindly from this quarter. Nonetheless, that dalliance has helped to add to the rich kit history of the club, which is what this site attempts to document.

Mick Ring already has an excellent site featuring his Cork City shirts, and this is intended to complement that site rather than compete with it. Working on a season-by-season basis, every single kit combination worn by the club will be featured, in time creating a comprehensive record.

If the site's mission statement comes across like plagiarism of www.unitedkits.com, then that is because that site, dedicated to Manchester United strips, is one of the inspirations for setting it up. Other websites focused on sporting apparel which I would recommend visiting are True Colours, Historical Kits, Tribal Colours, Hull City Kits, Wayward Effort and Design Football (all football), Footy Jumpers (Australian rules), The Gridiron Uniform Database (American football) and Pride In The Jersey (GAA, from the same stable as this site).