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• Red short-sleeved shirt. Deep white v-neck, with thin red and royal-blue stripe in middle. White cuffs, with thin red and royal-blue stripe in middle. Thick royal-blue panel across shoulders, either side of v-neck. Thick white line with slightly thinner royal-blue line directly underneath, across breast, either side of base of v-neck. Emblem underneath thin blue line on left breast on a white embroidered patch. Red logo, overlaid with 'Admiral' in royal-blue title case lettering on right breast on a white embroidered patch underneath thin blue line. White numbers on reverse in updated Admiral font from 1978.
• White shorts, with white drawstring. Red seams, with a thin royal-blue vertical stripe on each side. Red logo, overlaid with 'Admiral' in royal-blue title-case lettering on left thigh on a white embroidered patch.
• Red socks, with thick royal-blue stripe across tops, overlaid with red logos, but without the 'Admiral' lettering.

• The Admiral logos were removed from the shirts and shorts against France and the socks were of the 1974 white kit, without the Admiral logos of the updated white socks of 1981.
• Against West Germany, the white line across the breast was replaced by a thicker white band, with the blue line in the middle of it, and lowered to below the v-neck, with the blue line broken only by the point of the v-neck.
• A red logo with 'Admiral' in white was worn at the base of the first digit of the shirt number in the last game that the shirt was worn, against Greece at Wembley. This included the number four which was positioned higher up on the white shirt.
• Against France, England wore red numbers on the right thigh in a different font to that on the back of the shirt.
• Against West Germany, England wore the white shorts of the 1976 red kit, with the red Admiral logo that had been added in 1981. They wore white numbers, outlined in black, in the same font as the red numbers worn against France, again on the right thigh. The same style of white numbers had been worn on the blue shorts of the white kit earlier in the World Cup tournament.

5 - Kenny Sansom

4 - Steve Coppell, Trevor Francis (1 sub), Paul Mariner, Graham Rix (2 sub), Bryan Robson, Phil Thompson, Tony Woodcock (2 sub)

• Kenny Sansom also made most appearances in the white 1980 shirt.

• Sammy Lee was the only player to make his international debut in this shirt.

• Three players made their last international appearance in this shirt and, curiously, two of them (Steve Coppell and Phil Thompson) were each winning their 42^nd cap.

• The other player ending his England career in the shirt was Tony Morley, whose last cap was his sixth.

3 - Paul Mariner

2 - Tony Woodcock

• All of both Robson's and Mariner's goals were scored in the first two games that the shirt was worn.

• Sammy Lee scored the other goal, in England's 3-0 win in Greece, making him the only player to score his first England goal in the shirt.

1 - Kevin Keegan, Bryan Robson

• Kevin Keegan captained England for the 31^st and last time in his last full game for his country.
• Bryan Robson captained them for the first time in this shirt.

Following the launch of Admiral's second white shirt in 1980, it was a further two years before the second red shirt appeared, just as the first had had to wait a couple of years after 1974.

This time, however, England wore their 1976 red shirt twice more after the new white shirt had been introduced.

When the new red kit did arrive, England were preparing for their first World Cup tournament in twelve years, but it was the Under-21s who were the first to wear it, against Poland at West Ham, in April 1982. It was the same design as the white kit, so it didn't have quite the same impact, but it was soon subjected to a series of strange inconsistencies when it came to the seemingly simple task of sending out an England team in the same kit for each game.

To begin with, the Football Association seemed to be under the mistaken belief that teams were not allowed to display kit manufacturers' logos on the strip, just as they had been barred from doing at the 1980 European Championship. So, the kit worn against France was devoid of them.

A new red shirt was introduced against West Germany. For some inexplicable reason, the design had changed, and as nobody seemed to have spotted this at the time, at least two players were allowed to change into the shirts with the original design, at half-time, as illustrated by Paul Mariner's shirt (right - Terry Butcher is also seen sporting the revised design worn at the start of the game).

England also had problems with the numbers displayed on the shorts. They were red against France, but Mariner's had fallen off by the end of the game! Against West Germany, they instead wore the white numbers worn with the navy shorts and, of course, virtually invisible on a pair of white shorts! For some other strange reason, the shorts were not the ones worn in the two previous games featuring this design. They were the old design worn the previous year, with a simple red and blue stripe at the seam.

Unlike the replacement white shirts worn against Kuwait in the same World Cup tournament, the revised red shirt did not have an additional Admiral logo at the base of the numbers on the reverse, and it was to be a further nine months before this was added to the shirts worn against Greece. Alas, there was no further requirement for this kit to be worn after that.

The only conclusion that we can make from this sorry state of affairs is that no one was responsible for ensuring that there was any consistency and continuity in England's kit from one game to the next. It would appear that there were too many variations being added haphazardly. To be fair, no one noticed at the time and it's only been by studying photographic evidence that we can make these observations.

As well as being the first team to wear this kit, England's Under-21s also lifted a trophy in it. On 12 October, 1982, Sammy Lee captained England when they clinched the UEFA Under-21 Championship in Bremen, despite a 3-2 loss to West Germany in the second leg of the final. Five weeks later, Lee made his full international debut in Greece, once again in the red kit, and scored England's third goal to wrap up the European Championship qualifying points.

One further mix-up featuring the kit probably also occurred before the game with Greece, when both teams appeared in their second-choice colours, resulting in each wearing dark shirts (Greece in blue, England in red) and white shorts. Strangely enough, exactly the same thing had happened when England had last visited Greece, in 1971. On that occasion, because the majority of viewers had black-and-white television sets, Greece changed into blue shorts at half-time. In 1982 though, it was not such an issue, but nonetheless, an illustration of the lack of prior communication when it came to agreeing the colours to be worn.

The shirts displayed at the top of the page are those of Graham Rix (number 14 issued against Greece at Wembley) and Kevin Keegan (number seven issued for the 1982 World Cup). Rix came on as substitute against Greece, with England wearing Admiral logos on the back for the one and only time in this shirt. Keegan was injured when England wore the shirt without any logos against France. Many thanks to Simon Shakeshaft, curator of the Neville Evans National Football Shirt Collection, for the Rix shirt photos, and to Richard Clarke's 'Three Lions - England Match Worn Shirts' Facebook Collection for the image of the Keegan shirt.