All through the rugby world and all through history the England rugby team has been inextricably linked with the colour white.

Titles such as 'The Men in White' – Wallace Reyburn's definitive history of English rugby, 'The Red and the White' – Huw Richards' new and intriguing history of matches between England and Wales and 'White Orcs on steroids' – a New Zealand newspaper's shell-shocked description of England's extraordinary 2003 victory over the All Blacks.

However, on Saturday, Steve Borthwick and his men will take to the field in purple.

And that history has been re-written in the cause of marketing the new strip.

The rose on the England shirt is red and the stockings, until very recently, were blue. Either is a logical choice for a change strip. Indeed, red was the colour chosen by England only two years ago – in the run-up to the Rugby World Cup in France.

Replica shirts don't come cheaply, and the RFU can expect the sort of criticism directed at football clubs whose desperation to squeeze every last penny from long-suffering fans prompts them to change their playing strip with bewildering frequency.

Not only will I not buy the shirt, I also don't buy the reasoning behind the switch to purple.

In defending their choice, the marketing men use the word "iconic" to describe the England tracksuit of the 70s, 80s and 90s from which, they claim, they derive their inspiration.

They even quote past captain Will Carling, who recalls the thrill of receiving his first purple tracksuit when he played for England Schoolboys, and current captain Steve Borthwick, who remembers watching Carling and co lining up in their tracksuits.

But while they – no doubt prompted by the PR men – see the link between England rugby and the colour purple as somehow fitting and natural, I remember it as accidental and faintly embarrassing.

I played for England Schoolboys a decade or so before Will Carling and, like him, I was absolutely thrilled to receive the tracksuit.

It was the first tangible recognition that you had some status in your sport. Indeed, in those long-forgotten days when just about every top rugby player bought just about every bit of kit he appeared in, it was often the only sign of that status.

The tracksuit was treasured for what it represented, not for what it was. My memories of the tracksuits worn by England players of the 70s are of a light, stretchy, unnatural material with stirrups under the trousers and a thin, tight zip-up jacket which did anything but flatter the physique of a 70s forward.

And I don't recall that we were all that thrilled by the colour, which in those less complicated times was regarded as a little less than manly.

A popular theory among players was that the manufacturer had found no other way of getting rid of a lot of material in an unwanted colour than by unloading it onto the RFU.

But that tracksuit was also the thin end of a wedge. The manufacturer may or may not have been getting shot of an unpopular colour but he wasn't going to let a marketing opportunity pass him by.

The stuffed shirts at the RFU were equally intent on preserving the rigid rules on amateurism and, while they might reluctantly let a logo see the light of day on a training field, they were not going to let it see the light of television.

So I have a bizarre memory of a match at Murrayfield when, due to be presented, pre-match, to the Queen on a freezing January afternoon, the England skipper quite rightly suggested we keep our tracksuits on, only for the RFU to rustle up a set of unbranded tracksuits.

When charting the march towards professional rugby, the purple tracksuit deserves its place as a footnote.

For generations of rugby players it represented the achievement of an ambition to represent England.

But to use the purple tracksuit of the past to authenticate the purple shirt of the present is wrong.

England will probably look very fetching this Saturday and the marketing men will no doubt be very pleased.

But style is nothing without substance and, as they slip on their ergonomically-designed purple jerseys with their special underarm sleeve panels, Borthwick's men would do well to remember that.