It has gone down as one of the most infamous fashion disasters in English football kit history.

Coventry City, who wear a Sky Blue home kit, made the now infamous choice of chocolate brown as the colour of their away strip in the 1970s.

The kit was made in 1978 by Admiral, who also made the England kit at the time, and featured three white curved stripes than ran from the side of the shirts and right down to the shorts. It was quickly panned and regularly features near the top of ‘top ten worst ever kit’ lists.

A key player who sported the kit was Scotsman Ian Wallace, who ended the 1978/79 as top scorer with 15  goals. Defender and fellow Scotsman Bobby McDonald won the club’s player of the year award as the side finished 10th. The year before the team scored a club record 73 goals, with Wallace bagging 23, en route to an impressive 7th place finish, playing arguably the finest football in the division that year under boss Gordon Milne.
 
But despite the relative success of that year the club suffered from financial problems throughout the 70s and many players were sold to balance the books, including Wallace who moved to Nottingham Forest for £1.25 million in 1980. With little silverware to cheer about, it seems a safe football bet that the brown kit became the defining image of the era.

However, time appears to be a great healer as the strip has now become cult kit in the eyes of modern day City fans.

So much so that in 2008, to mark the club’s 125th Anniversary, the club once again donned the chocolate brown for the club’s last home fixture of the season against Watford. This was much to the frustration of Sky Blues boss Chris Coleman, who thought the wearing of the kit would make the match become a sideshow. He perhaps had a point as his side crashed to a 3-2 defeat. It was a hit with the fans though, who gladly snapped up the 1,125 limited edition shirts produced to mark the occasion.