The Night Stockport Became Romania

22 October 1996. Ewood Park. Third Round of the League Cup. Blackburn Rovers, Premier League side and recent title winners, host Stockport County of Division Two. What should have been a straightforward cup fixture turned into one of English football’s most bizarre and iconic kit moments.

Stockport's blue home kit and white away kit clashed too much with Blackburn’s blue and white halves. With no third kit to fall back on, Stockport had to find a solution.

The Hatters were supplied by Adidas, whose offices were just down the road in Manchester.  A call was made, a van dispatched, and what arrived was not just any set of spare shirts. It was a batch of Romania’s 1996 national team shirts, fresh from Adidas stock. Bright yellow, with red and blue trim, complete with the shimmering geometric Romania jacquard pattern and shirt patch worn by the likes of Hagi and Popescu at Euro '96.

The Stockport kit team got to work. The club badge was sewn over the Romania crest, the Robinson’s Bitter sponsor was heat-pressed on, and the players took to the field in these borrowed shirts paired with their usual home shorts and socks. A Frankenstein mash-up of a kit; half Greater Manchester, half Bucharest.

Then came the result.

In the second half, Sean Connelly whipped in a low cross that took a touch off Blackburn captain Tim Sherwood and trickled into the net. It was the only goal of the game. Stockport 1, Blackburn 0. A Second Division side, wearing repurposed Romania shirts, had just knocked out a Premier League club on their own ground.

Today, that shirt is a cult collector’s item - only 12 exist. Canary yellow, with Stockport’s crest stitched over the ghost of Romania’s badge, it’s a symbol of football’s improvisational spirit, a reminder that not everything needs to be pre-approved and perfectly branded.

You couldn’t get away with it now. But in 1996, all you needed was a phone call to Adidas, a sewing machine, and a bit of cup magic.