It was the summer of 2009 and Newcastle United were in crisis. The Magpies had been relegated, owner Mike Ashley wanted out, the club did not even have a manager and the dressing room needed fumigating.
Then a new garish custard cream away kit complete with yellow shorts and matching socks was unveiled. Even the man behind it, Adidas designer Inigo Turner, acknowledged it was 'a bit of a marmite shirt'.
"It was in some of the horror lists in the tabloid newspapers," Turner told ChronicleLive. "That was one of the headlines: they have been relegated and now they have to play in this kit!"
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The strip may have been reduced in the club megastore before it even came out, but this kit soon became part of the journey this side went on that season. It was rather fitting that Newcastle players wore the two-tone yellow number during the nadir of that campaign, a 6-1 pre-season defeat at Leyton Orient, but, also, the high point nine months later: the 2-0 victory at Plymouth that sealed the Championship title win.
It was also the strip of choice for spirited wins on the road against Cardiff City, Sheffield United, Preston North End, Coventry City, Peterborough United and Reading that season. You can see why Chris Hughton grew to love it and the former Newcastle boss said it was 'definitely a favourite of mine'.
"In that great season, we had opportunities to change the shirt occasionally for commercial reasons, but the players insisted on wearing it," he told ChronicleLive. "It was a shirt that served us well and we didn't want to change."
So how did Newcastle end up wearing it in the first place? Well, work began on the kit 18 months before it was released, when the Magpies were still an established Premier League outfit under Kevin Keegan.
Turner, the kit designer, previously studied in Newcastle and embarked on a fact-finding mission to get a feel for the history of the club ahead of sitting down in his design studio. Newcastle already had a history of yellow change strips, particularly in the period between the mid-70's and the early '90s, and Turner decided to combine two shades of the colour to mirror the stripes used for both the home and third kits.
"That was very much part of the DNA of the club and the idea around it was to do it in a new way basically," he said. "We wanted to do something that was a bit different, quite arresting, that looked progressive and would stand out.
"That was the ambition. It was combining the stripes and bringing these two yellow colours together, which would give it a modern edge. The brighter yellow is very bold and had that feeling and look of performance and sports in the kit with a classic design, but with a modern edge.
"The club really liked that design. We had different options around that theme of yellow and the one which we ended up doing was the brightest. They were not shying away from doing something that was quite edgy."
While the actual look of the shirt was very much Turner's idea, the designer did speak to the players in the early stages of the project. The mechanics of the kits were not too tailored to specific needs, because there was no guarantee some of these individuals would even be at Newcastle in 18 months' time to wear it, but feedback was certainly taken on board.
The fabric of the shirt was engineered material, for example, so it was quite rich in detail and texture as seen with the embossed seahorses on the hip in a nod to the club crest. The climacool technology also meant that the players would dry quickly when sweating.
All these years later, the kit, naturally, brings back fond memories for Jose Enrique, who went on to be voted the club's player of the year that season, but it was not necessarily a hit at first.
"Don't get me wrong, it's not the nicest shirt ever - that's the reality - but it's a shirt that I will always remember because of the promotion," the former left-back told ChronicleLive. "It was a very good moment for me, personally.
"I felt the love from Newcastle fans every season, but that season more than ever because it was up to me to get their support. They always supported me even in the bad moments when I didn't start the season that well.
"It made me feel like, 'I'm in the UK. I'm loving it. I don't want to move anywhere and I'm happy at Newcastle and I want to stay here.' Obviously, we were promoted afterwards and I later left for many reasons like you all know but that season, especially, I loved it. The shirt is a symbol of that so it will always be a happy memory."
It ended up proving the last Newcastle kit ever manufactured by Adidas as a long-standing 15-year partnership soon came to an end. The Magpies went on to work with Puma before signing up with Castore last summer, but the club's retro Adidas kits remain immensely popular.
Perhaps, that should not come as a surprise. Paul McCaughey, who was Adidas' head of football business at the start of the deal, previously told ChronicleLive that 'Newcastle United changed the way kits were made and a lot more thought and detail went into them after that'.
Such was the level of research and planning, Turner had even started working on a new set of kits for the 2010-11 season before the partnership ended. So were they even wilder than the custard cream offering?
"I wouldn't say they were crazier, but they definitely went in a different direction again," he added. "It was a bit of a shame because I felt we were developing nicely with Newcastle and, then, unfortunately, it wasn't continued but who knows what happens in the future?"
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