From nuns' knickers to replica kits - the firm that changed how fans followed club heroes

ITV News Central Sport Correspondent Daniel Salisbury-Jones has been speaking to the firm that changed football shirt sales.

At the Qatar World Cup, in the stands behind each goal you will see the heads of fans bobbing in a sea of replica shirts.This was the future of the game first envisaged by a small Leicestershire company that made knickers for nuns.Admiral changed the way supporters follow their favourite teams by making replicas of the shirts worn by their heroes on the pitch.First they got a contract with Leeds United, England followed and around 1980 they were making what felt like half the kits in the Football League.This off-field underdog story was first documented in a film by Andy Wells on ITV in 2016, now he's written a book about it called 'Get Shirty'.

Author Andy says:

'They'd been making underwear, and then suddenly you'd have the England manager walking into this building and he would be walking around.

'You'd have the stars, you'd have Kevin Keegan, Peter Shilton. All these A-list celebrities are now coming in to see what they were actually doing.'They paid teams to wear their kits with an Admiral logo on, and these were individually designed kits with chevrons and stripes, that had never been done before.

'This business model was then evolved, it was taken up by the likes of Umbro and Adidas and other kit manufacturers but the actual business model started with Admiral'.

Those days didn't last long as the company overstretched itself and went out of business. Andy is speaking to me outside what remains of the factory on Long St in Wigston. Today it's being converted into apartments.'Once the documentary went up, people came forward. Different people who I'd never met before contacted me with different stories, different angles. So actually we could tell a story more fully in the book.'It's not just about football kits and the design. There's a, you know, element of social history and about the heritage Wigston manufacturing'.As well as the classics that are still worn to this day, there were some more controversial choices, but if you were a Coventry City fan with questionable fashion taste in the seventies, you're in luck. The chocolate brown number is now a collector's item.'I spoke to a collector a few weeks ago, he said they just don't come up. He said the last one he saw that came up was about £800 it went for, and he thinks he saw one recently change hands for £1,000. So if you've got one in the loft, yeah, you might want to have a look and try and get down'.The price of today's football shirts makes it hard to look back with complete fondness at what as created here but for better or worse, this small part of Wigston changed football forever.