Chris Toft answers the front door looking completely on brand. He’s wearing a grey, garish Tomas Brolin t-shirt from the 1990s. It’s the first time we’ve ever met, but I would have expected nothing less.

After spotting a Leeds fan in a Filipe Da Costa shirt on the way to the Burnley game earlier this season, we put a callout to readers to send us the photos of the strangest names they’ve had printed on the back of kits for issue two of this season’s magazine. Some of the responses were superb — Habibou 22, Showunmi 21, Drury 3 — but Chris had an entire collection of them: Grot 11, Hunt 10, Nicholls 18. Name an obscure player to appear for Leeds in the last thirty years, and there’s a good chance Chris has their name on the back of a shirt, so we had to meet him to find out how and why.

It’s a collection that has been decades in the making. “I’m technically a glory supporter, if such a Leeds fan exists” he says. “It was like the tail end of the 1991/92 season when I started supporting them. I remember going round to a mate’s house watching that Liverpool and Man U game that won us the title.”

Chris shows us the first kit in his collection, the first shirt he ever owned — a fake 1991/92 home kit, made by Triangle Sport. “I think I was there and saw it outside Leeds market with my mum when she bought it,” he says, before reaching for a genuine 91/92 home shirt with ‘League Champions 91/92’ stitched into the chest. It’s still in the original plastic. “I’ve never taken it out.”

By 1994, Chris was a season ticket holder at Elland Road, and he still owns the booklet containing all his tickets, accompanied by sheets he has filled in himself detailing the line-ups and goalscorers from each game, not to mention the Yorkshire Evening Post’s ‘Star Man’. “If you have a look at that, that’s the kind of mind you’re dealing with when I started supporting Leeds properly.”

Chris’ earliest dalliances with getting names printed on the back of his shirts have aged well, Strachan 7 and Deane 9, although Deane was a slightly unusual choice given his slow start at his boyhood club.

“Deane might be the key to getting all the random names,” he says, “or the ones that are not as popular. It was the last home game with the old kop when it was still all standing. You know one of those uncles you’ve got who’s not an uncle — I saw him when I was wearing this shirt and he started laughing. Deane didn’t have the best first season with us, but I still liked him.”

While Chris didn’t start seriously collecting shirts immediately, his stash has grown to now include a rail of goalkeeper shirts, two rails of home and away shirts, and a myriad of t-shirts, scarves, and concept kits either boxed up or folded into suitcases.

“I always picked up one or two, but I’ve always kind of collected random stuff. Sometimes it was more of a buy-sell, money-making thing. The problem is if I get an idea in my head to collect something, it has to be every one for some reason. I’m not even happy with this collection, the fact that I’ve not got every long-sleeved one. I’ve got to complete it, but what is completing it? It depends on what your definition of completion is,” he says, picking out a Paul Rachubka goalkeeper shirt.

“When I first started thinking, ‘I’m going to start collecting these now,’ it wasn’t even with the names on or anything. I was just thinking, ‘Get the home and away of each season.’ Which is harder than you think actually, because some shirts they use as the away kit for one season, and then the third kit for the next season. Sometimes they have a different — this is how tapped I am — they have a different sponsor on the sleeve or something.”

Which explains why Chris has multiples of the same shirt. Not only does he buy short and long-sleeved versions, but “also being a collector, I have to get one with the font in the club style and one with the Premier League style.” That includes any sleeve sponsors that need to be added. “It’s got to be the full everything.”

“At the beginning of collecting it all properly, I’d just go mental and buy anything. I was buying ones in like youth XL and stuff like that, thinking, ‘This is ridiculous.’ Mainly ‘keeper ones, because they only really sell in smaller sizes. I ended up with tons of quite small ones, so my mate who I have a season ticket next to, his two kids have got loads of random Leeds shirts with like Carole on the back or random ‘keepers like Ankergren. They’re the only ones I’ve got rid of.”

Chris is yet to buy this season’s shirts, and has already pencilled in Tanaka 22 for the back of one of them. “Ramazani is probably a good chance for another,” he says. Last season, he opted for Joe Rodon, Dan James (“he’s my current favourite player”), and Mateo Joseph on the pink away shirt he wore while scoring twice at Chelsea in the FA Cup. The problem with Leeds being good is that it makes Chris’ choice more difficult. “I’ve always kind of liked the players that everyone hates for some reason. Maybe it’s just that Leeds have turned me mental. It probably started with Tomas [Brolin].”

He pulls out a charcoal and pink away kit that Leeds wore in the famous win at Swansea, with Hernandez 19 on the back.

“Don’t get me wrong, I have got good players as well. I’ve either got ones that are terrible, they’re normally done afterwards because you don’t know they’re going to be terrible players, or sort of great moment ones like Raphinha at Brentford and Billy Paynter that time he did score.”

We’re starting to get on a roll as we browse through the shirts and the names get more and more baffling. Lasogga. Milosevic. Kandol. Stone. Nunez. Pedraza. Two Tore Andre Flo shirts (8 and 19). Match-worn George McCartny and Tommaso Bianchi kits, both signed. A match-worn Souleymane Doukara shirt, signed by four other players but not Doukara. Ian Moore! Alex Bruce!! Cameron Borthwick-Jackson!!!

There are England kits with Phillips, Martyn, Bowyer, Batty, and Fowler printed on the back. Bootleg t-shirts. A suitcase full of scarves, including the erroneously-printed Jamie Bamford scarf that went viral online.

Among Chris’ prized possessions are his collection of Mateus Klich shirts. There are nine in total, plus a DC United DHgate special. “I just loved his shithousing,” he says. “And he was actually a good player. If you put a gun to my head, my favourite players would be Tony [Yeboah] top, then Gordon [Strachan], then Klich. Although Rod Wallace would be in there. And Batty. And Berardi.” He even shares a personal collection with Klich — his friend’s dad just so happens to be Bob, of “fuck off, Bob” fame.

Not everything is quite so valuable, however. Did he get the Steve Morison shirt signed personally? “No, I think I just bought it because it was very cheap.”

The sheer amount of shirts is starting to get overwhelming, so we take a little break, but the treasure trove doesn’t stop. Chris opens up a suitcase that must be almost a century old. It belonged to his great-grandad, Joe Thompson, a Leeds and Great Britain rugby league great, who also played rugby union internationally for Wales. According to legend, Leeds RL scouted Thompson when he made his debut for Wales against England at Twickenham, watching him calmly walk over to the sidelines, spit a few broken teeth out, and crack on with the game. At that moment, Leeds decided Thompson was exactly the player they needed, and he was ultimately named in the club’s Hall of Fame in 2018. The suitcase is what Thompson took with him on three tours of Australia while playing for Great Britain (they won the Ashes in all three), and is full of international caps, medals, a signed boomerang, and a Maori shield.

But we can’t stay away from the Leeds shirt collection for long and need one last look before we go, which begs the question, how much time does Chris himself actually spend looking through them?

“I can go for like a month or something and think, ‘You’re an idiot, why are you doing all this?’ And then I’ll just have a look and think, ‘Oh yeah, I need to get that.’ Then I’ll buy one and think, ‘Well, if I’m buying one, I might as well get another and get the names done on them.’”

And how often does he wear the shirts themselves? Does he ever occasionally pull on the Butler 6 shirt and pretend he’s captaining Leeds in a play-off final defeat?

“I wear the t-shirts to games, I’m not really one for wearing shirts with players’ names to the game,” Chris laughs. “It’s a bit sad.” ⬢

This article is from issue three of The Square Ball magazine. Get your copy here.