Boardmasters 2024: wearing a football shirt is a conversation starter- and the Newquay festival was brimming

“Is that a Stoke shirt?” I got asked for the fifth occasion on Friday at Boardmasters Festival. I turned around to my fellow festival goer to explain, like I had four other times before, that it was in fact a Sunderland shirt. A 1996 shirt, bidding farewell to my club’s old home Roker Park, to be exact. 

This is the kind of shared interest that comes with wearing football shirts at music festivals. It brings with it a chance to brag, critique and end up talking to people who are in reality total strangers. 

Walking back to my tent in the afternoon of Boardies Friday, I overheard a group of lads walking towards me saying “lets critique some football shirts,” and of course my red and white number was the first one they came across. “Athletico are s***!” One of them shouted my way, to which I turned around to say “It’s not Athletico Madrid lads.” I tell you what though, over 20 years watching Sunderland maybe I wish it was? No, not really. 

The sun blessed the main arena on the opening day of the main music segment of Boardmasters 2024. Courteeners were my pick of the Friday action, and a flurry of football shirts littered the crowd as front man Liam Fray led the band from Middleton, Greater Manchester on stage. 

I started to cheer and applaud as he did so, only to turn to my left and see a guy in a 1990s era Manchester United home shirt giving my Sunderland badge a thorough visual investigation. “Unlucky,” was his first one word answer, and funnily enough I’ve had lots of sympathy thrown my way from people when wearing a shirt of my club. I’ve no idea why… maybe 51 years without a major trophy and eight years without Premier League football has something to do with it. 

After the initial joking, I got chatting away in between each Courteeners song and established where we were both from and who we wanted to catch this weekend. We ended up having a sing-a-long together, and their mates - two of which were also in football shirts- turned up too.

Another United top and a West Ham shirt completed a quartet of colour, which was enjoyed long into the set. This chat wouldn’t have happened without me wearing a Sunderland shirt, and this is evidence enough for me that footie shirts do get people talking. 

The range of football shirts on show is vast, perhaps the widest I’ve ever seen in my several years of festival-going. Another thing I noticed is the increase in retro shirts, something I am a big investor in. There’s something different about a classic shirt, and every team from Juventus to Plymouth Argyle were represented in the fields of Newquay. 

Saturday’s football shirt helping was heavily dominated by the black and white of Newcastle United. Magpie’s fans have taken to Fender, and fans of the North Shields singer have started wearing the shirts and some opting for ‘Fender 17’ on the back. It’s certainly signs that the fan bases are united. 

The football shirt culture is one I can get behind and one I’m firmly a member of. Getting lost in random conversations with strangers is one of the highlights of a music festival, if its one that is triggered by something as simple as the colour of stripes on your football shirt then even better, I say.