Solomon Islands

Home, 2015/18

This Solomon Islands shirt is the third of three OFC own-brand shirts from the same period as my Tonga and Papua New Guinea shirts which I recently posted. All three were purchased by contacting the OFC team-wear online store, which sadly appears to now be closed down. It is more or less the same template as those shirts, just using a V-neck. In fact, Solomon Island teams wore both this V-neck and the ‘mandarin’ style collar, sometimes even in the same game. From this crop of kits which were launched in 2015, pre-switch to Pacifika branded shirts, it would seem this Solomon shirt may have been the longest serving, with it still being used by underage teams in 2018 (clearly hand-me-downs from the senior team, as it some still had World Cup qualifying patches). It really was a great development for us collectors when the OFC started their kit supply program. Many of the OFC nations were hard to get, owing both to a lack of matches being played and also football associations who did not have the infrastructure or will to sell shirts.

Like the other shirts in this range, it appears the OFC made their kits so that they could be used by many different teams. So with this shirt, it is a fairly generic green with yellow trim. However, the Solomon Islands have a history of some great shirts which used the rich colours of their flag, such as these from a famous draw with Australia in 2004, another game against the Aussies in 2005, and this undated shirt.

The Solomon Islands football association was affiliated to FIFA in 1988, though like many nations were playing games as a national team before FIFA recognition. Other than an OFC Nations Cup second place in 2014, Solomon Islands have little or no success to discuss. Bizarrely, the Solomon u23 side managed to once win a tournament which also contained the Solomon senior team. The Wantok Cup was created to celebrate the respective independence days of Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea, the idea being that a series of games would be played in each nation around their respective independence days. However, only the Solomon Islands ever actually hosted any games, in 2008, with the other two nations ultimately declining to host their editions. With Papua New Guinea even dropping out that one-and-only playing of the tournament, it left just three teams - Solomon senior and u23 sides, and Vanuatu. The two Solomon teams drew, and when the seniors lost to Vanuatu after the u23s had beaten them, it meant the u23s topped the ground and won the cup. All in all, not a great success and it is probably little wonder that the Cup was never staged again.

The Solomon Islanders do play their home game in one of the most scenic national stadiums, the Lawson Tama Stadium in Honiara. Not only is it positioned at the bottom of the hills, overlooking the sea, its main feature is what must be one of the last grass terraces left in the game at international level. When full, it almost gives a sense of Borussia Dortmund’s ‘Yellow Wall’ or Liverpool’s Kop. In January 2019, it was announced that the stadium would receive a $6.5 million redevelopment, but OFC officials would not confirm what, if anything, would happen to the iconic hillside feature.