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Why Green and Yellow?


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O.K...I have wondered about this for a few years, now, but never thought to ask.  Why do Australian sporting teams wear Green and Yellow?

To confuse them with Brazilians so that

1.  if they lose, then people will think it's Brazilians who lost; and

2.  so the Brazilians will cheer for them because the Brazilians have the best cheering squads on the planet.

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Good question _ and I have absolutely no idea why.

S'pose red, white ad blue are far too common anyway. I've heard people referring to the colours as representing gum leaves and wattle, but I expect that's an extrapolation after the event.

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Simple, Australia’s national (sporting) colours are green and gold; a few countries national colures don’t match the colours of the flag, the ones I can think of are:

Australia – Green and Gold (Yellow)

New Zealand – Black and Silver (White)

Netherlands – Orange

India – Sky Blue

Italy – Blue

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O.K...I have wondered about this for a few years, now, but never thought to ask.  Why do Australian sporting teams wear Green and Yellow?

When and why did Australia adopt green and gold as our national sporting colours, when the national flag is another set of colours altogether?

Richard Cashman, the Director of the Centre for Olympic Studies from the University of New South Wales answers this question.

It has to do with Federation which occured in 1901, before 1901, teams representing Australia wore many different colours, in fact they were a pretty motley lot before 1900. Sometimes they wore the Melbourne Cricket Club colours (red, white and blue), sometimes some other colours like light NSW state blue.

Once Federation occured, there was a need to have national colours and one of the problems was that our national flag, the colours there were red, white and blue, and when we played England at cricket, it was inappropriate to play in the same colours.

It was also linked with a kind of emerging Australian nationalism to find colours that kind of reflected an Australian identity.

So the colours that were chosen were green and to represent the gum tree, and gold to represent wattle.

Green was a relatively new colour in sport, because it was difficult for dyers for one reason or another to make jerseys that were green, in the late 19th century. So all the early football clubs don’t have green in their guernseys.

The Australian cricket team were the first really to develop green and gold, but they wore sage green, which is a yellowy sort of green. Green and gold were first worn in a Test match in 1902. Green and gold were first worn in the Olympics in 1908, but it was a myrtle green which is a slightly darker green.

For the 1908 Olympic Games in London, the British Olympic Council mandated that all nations had to wear their own unique uniforms. For the previous Olympics, the Australian teams didn’t have a uniform at all. They wore civvies in the opening ceremonies and state colours in the actual events.

New Zealand had the same problem: the Kiwis chose black as their colour, we chose green and gold.

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O.K...I have wondered about this for a few years, now, but never thought to ask.  Why do Australian sporting teams wear Green and Yellow?

When and why did Australia adopt green and gold as our national sporting colours, when the national flag is another set of colours altogether?

Richard Cashman, the Director of the Centre for Olympic Studies from the University of New South Wales answers this question.

It has to do with Federation which occured in 1901, before 1901, teams representing Australia wore many different colours, in fact they were a pretty motley lot before 1900. Sometimes they wore the Melbourne Cricket Club colours (red, white and blue), sometimes some other colours like light NSW state blue.

Once Federation occured, there was a need to have national colours and one of the problems was that our national flag, the colours there were red, white and blue, and when we played England at cricket, it was inappropriate to play in the same colours.

It was also linked with a kind of emerging Australian nationalism to find colours that kind of reflected an Australian identity.

So the colours that were chosen were green and to represent the gum tree, and gold to represent wattle.

Green was a relatively new colour in sport, because it was difficult for dyers for one reason or another to make jerseys that were green, in the late 19th century. So all the early football clubs don’t have green in their guernseys.

The Australian cricket team were the first really to develop green and gold, but they wore sage green, which is a yellowy sort of green. Green and gold were first worn in a Test match in 1902. Green and gold were first worn in the Olympics in 1908, but it was a myrtle green which is a slightly darker green.

For the 1908 Olympic Games in London, the British Olympic Council mandated that all nations had to wear their own unique uniforms. For the previous Olympics, the Australian teams didn’t have a uniform at all. They wore civvies in the opening ceremonies and state colours in the actual events.

New Zealand had the same problem: the Kiwis chose black as their colour, we chose green and gold.

Thanks!  What's a wattle?

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Netherlands – Orange

... originally the Dutch flag was orange-white-blue - over the years the orange was changed into red...

nl-princ.gif

The so called "Princevlag" - the royal family of the Netherlands was the house of Orange-Nassau. Orange is a small town in France and Nassau was a German dukedom, which became a province of Prussia in 1866.

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i've always thought it was the wattle, yeah. Another symbolism is the grass and the desert, but I prefer the wattle reason.

re-netherlands. They have a saying, 'Oranje boven' which means 'orange on top', about their flag. So even though it is red, orange is still their main colour.

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com-coat-arms.jpg

I thought the green-yellow of Australia comes from the plant, which is on the Australian Coat of arms...

That's the wattles - an Australian variety of the acacia.

Exactly, that IS wattle, one of our winter blooming flowers in Australia.

860190.jpg

And as for gum, or eucalyptus, leaves;

Eucalyptus_ficifolia_leaf3_4-24-00.JPG

I must admit, seing a pic of a gum leaf always makes me feel a bit homesick

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com-coat-arms.jpg

I thought the green-yellow of Australia comes from the plant, which is on the Australian Coat of arms...

That's the wattles - an Australian variety of the acacia.

Exactly, that IS wattle, one of our winter blooming flowers in Australia.

860190.jpg

And as for gum, or eucalyptus, leaves;

Eucalyptus_ficifolia_leaf3_4-24-00.JPG

I must admit, seing a pic of a gum leaf always makes me feel a bit homesick

There are eucalypts in portugal if you are desperate...

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com-coat-arms.jpg

I thought the green-yellow of Australia comes from the plant, which is on the Australian Coat of arms...

That's the wattles - an Australian variety of the acacia.

Exactly, that IS wattle, one of our winter blooming flowers in Australia.

860190.jpg

And as for gum, or eucalyptus, leaves;

Eucalyptus_ficifolia_leaf3_4-24-00.JPG

I must admit, seing a pic of a gum leaf always makes me feel a bit homesick

There are eucalypts in portugal if you are desperate...

Actually, there's eucalypts in heaps of places _ all over Spain, and I remember the first time I was in California, especially around San Diego, there were so many eucalypts that I felt I was back in Oz.

Alas, none in northern Europe, though.

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