Carlisle United's new away kit is bonkers...and I love it

You’re either in or you’re out. It’s either drinking ten pints and lobbing the full palette at your new away shirt, splattering the wall and the dog in the process, or it’s playing it entirely safe: one colour, simple design, straight lines, designated drivers.

To hell with it, Carlisle United and Umbro have clearly thought. This might be our one chance to produce a kit in yellow, pink and black with a bit of one, a splash of the other, a splodge of the third and let’s see what happens and have another pint.

The result is possibly the most lurid strip United have ever sported – which, given their history, is saying something.

And, precisely because of this – I absolutely love it.

Now, I normally subscribe to the view that folk reach a certain age after which they shouldn’t get too overheated about what pieces of fabric look like just because they have your club’s badge on them.

Jon Mellish models Carlisle's new away kit (Image: Umbro / Carlisle United)

Good kit, terrible kit, mediocre kit, boring kit, decent kit…we’re rarely talking this way when the season’s a few weeks in. The debate – and there’s always debate – soon fades.

But if there’s going to be debate, let it be based on genuine absurdity. Let’s have something truly potty to talk about.

Let us have pink and then let us have lots of yellow next to it. And let us not settle for this time-honoured blend of rhubarb and custard. Let us place liquorice in there too, and then let us call it a football strip.

Magnificent.

The good news is that Carlisle’s 2023/24 change strip is unlikely to clash with anyone else’s unless Mr Blobby enters a team in League One at the last minute.

As such, we ought to see it plenty of times when the Cumbrians take on other sides who have the temerity also to play in blue.

So, buckle up, Wigan Athletic. Brace yourselves, Peterborough United. Reach for your shades, Wycombe Wanderers. Stand by, Portsmouth.

The Fruit Salad Blues are coming. The Jorge Campos Blues are coming. The Bertie Bassett Blues are coming. The explosion-in-a-paint-factory Blues are coming. The Scotland Italia 90 Third Kit Blues are coming. The – my favourite on Twitter so far, thanks @eldy78 – “sunburnt giraffe” Blues are coming.

And you’ll know they’re coming, because you’ll see them coming. You’ll probably see them coming even before they’ve left Carlisle.

In previous seasons we’ve had to raid the thesaurus to describe some of United’s kits – Grape Juice, After Eight and so forth.

Those, though, have referred to a single colour. Good luck bestowing a simple title on 2023/24’s creation. Commentators: “Portsmouth are in their traditional blue and white, and visitors Carlisle are in...just about everything else.”

Some people – a lot, probably – thought this way about United’s change strip in 1994. A kit of green, red and white stripes defied the sober simplicity of old. It went full nineties, and then some. It was a Carlisle kit that didn’t look like a Carlisle kit.

By heck, it became a Carlisle kit: worn all the way to a championship, Wembley, up and down the land and proudly for 29 years since by those who bought it.

Carlisle's 1994/5 'deckchair' was a colourful creation - and became hugely popular

United achieved sartorial popularity with a little boldness then. They might well do the same this time by turning the colour dial so much it breaks.

Fans of other clubs have predictably greeted Carlisle’s away design with a lot of vomiting emojis, my-eyes memes and allegations of crimes against kits.

That alone is a reason to love it. It is an enemy of seriousness, a big raspberry to being sensible.

Look – we don’t always have to be sensible. Modern football has quite enough of that. Occasionally you need to dress up like a paintballing trip gone wrong, and totally embrace it.

And hey, it could be another psychological strength: this is what we look like, and we still reckon we can beat you.

Or maybe it won't be that at all, and it’s just a kit. But what a kit. What a ridiculous, beautiful monstrosity of a kit. May it sell by the million.