Posts filed under 'rugby shirt'
It’s not just our sporting heroes who are struggling – the polo shirts and rugby shirt worlds are reeling today. Hot on the heels of the dropping of Johnny Wilkinson from the England team came the news that Matthew Hoggard and Steve Harmison, his co-bowler had been dropped as bowlers for the forthcoming cricket match! Woe, oh woe! For those who make their living from the production and sale of sporting shirts and memorabilia, this is a double whammy. Wilkinson shirts, in all their forms and sizes, sell more than all the rest of the England Rugby squad put together, and while cricket sports tops are not sold in anything like the numbers of their rugby and football counterparts, the dropping of two experienced bowlers in favour of two relative unknowns has meant that many retailers have been scratching their heads, having no shirts printed up with the names of the replacements. The only good news, possibly, is that while the second day’s racing at Cheltenham was cancelled due to strong winds making the tented village unsafe for spectators, there are almost no promotional horse-racing garments, so nobody is going to be losing a fortune – except the bookies!
Rugby courtesy of bombdog
March 14th, 2008
To overcome Vista’s somewhat negative public perception issues, Microsoft Australia has put together an online Fact or Fiction quiz about Windows Vista. Everyone who enters gets a certificate of completion and, if you are an OEM system builder, you get Windows Vista Advisor polo-shirts too. The catch here? You may have to move to Australia and become an OEM system builder to qualify ….
Crew make embroidered linen T-shirts for women as well as polo shirts and short sleeved rugby shirts – they came into being in 1993, selling yachting kit to the rich, famous, deck-shoe wearing hordes who arrive on the Isle of Wight every Cowes week. To get your free polo shirts, all you have to do is join the England polo team, because Crew are the team sponsor. Where’s the catch? Well buying a couple of ponies and having enough airfare to fly around the world to play, right?
The Greg Norman Collection, which features golf shirts, polo shirts and other top of the line golfing apparel is sponsoring Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Club Golf League. The first two hundred league members to enter a score in the 2008 competition ‘won’ GNC items while this year’s finalists will receive shirts from GNC’s Spring/Summer range. The league is open to all European and US based Virgin Atlantic Flying Club members and the season highlight will be a competition at St Regis Monarch Beach, California, in September. Now that actually might be something that many of us can attain to! So for more info, visit: www.flyingclubgolfleague.com.
Greg Norman image courtesy of DanPerry.com
February 28th, 2008
Here’s an interesting fact. Shirt pockets are disappearing. Ten years ago 90% of the shirts sold by Marks and Spencer had a front pocket, today that percentage is down to 25%. Why? Well, the sartorial expert who was consulted on this subject by no less august a body than the BBC said that he thought it was because men were more clothes aware than they had been in the past and the shirt pocket simply ruins the line of the shirt, especially if you put something in it, so they’ve opted for pocket-free shirts and neater silhouttes.
I think that’s rubbish, to be honest. Most men are happy if what they wear to work is clean, comfortable and doesn’t get them laughed at on public transport. I think the real reason is that what men use pockets for has changed. Think about it - ten years ago a mobile phone was a rarity, and what most men put in their shirt pocket was a pen and maybe a packet of cigarettes. Today fewer people smoke and business people carry BlackBerrys. Now a BlackBerry is a nice thing, handles calls and emails and acts as a phone and a calculator and so on, but it doesn’t fit in a shirt pocket, does it?
No, it doesn’t and as a result, the shirt pocket has gone the way of all other evolutionary dead ends - it’s begun its march to extinction. However, on casual shirts, pockets are MORE evident. Why? Because most of us carry a mobile and while we might put it in our jacket pocket at work, we slide it into our top pocket when we’re wearing a polo or rugby shirt. Simple isn’t it? Business shirt photograph by Plutor, used under a creative commons attribution licence
November 8th, 2007
Official England rugby replica shirts sold out early, because rugby chiefs were expecting England to lose! Which of course, they did, but not when the Rugby Football Union thought they would. The RFU underestimated demand for the shirts when it placed its order at the end of last year because at that time England had suffered a humiliating defeat to Argentina and the England coach had been ignominiously dismissed.
So the RFU commissioned Nike to make 20,000 shirts and a further 20,000 were ordered by high street retailers. All were sold by the semis. It seems that originally, sports shops were wary about placing orders as England were tipped for an early exit from the World Cup. But following the wins over Australia and then France in the semi-finals there was overwhelming demand for shirts.
A Nike spokesman said, “This has been the most successful shirt we have sold through the RFU. The market for replica rugby shirts is not as developed or established as for football shirts. Retailers didn’t want to order a whole load of them before the World Cup and find themselves sitting on them afterwards.”
Well they didn’t – they ran out of stock!
On the other hand, Wales rugby fans are still able to buy replica playing shirts after their team’s miserable early exit, in Ireland there are plenty of leftover World Cup shirts. And in Australian replica shirts were halved in price after they were beaten by England in the quarter finals.
England Rugby team photograpy by Catherine Trigg, used under a creative commons attribution licence.
November 5th, 2007
As the minnows swim into the same pool as the whales, (sorry Scotland, better luck next time!) and coaches and managers are sacked, left right and centre, it’s a good time to look at the background to the game’s most famous product (apart from Johnny Wilkinson’s kicking skills, of course) the shirt.
A rugby shirt is also known as a jersey, and the term describes shirts worn by both rugby union and rugby league players. In sports terms it may have long or short sleeves, although the garment trade views long sleeves as standard. Traditionally, rugby shirts had a buttoned opening, called a placket, which is similar to that used in polo shirts but with a stiffer collar. However, modern rugby shirts often have a very small collar so as to provide less material for a potential tackler to get hold of – of course that would be illegal, and never happens, but isn’t it interesting that garment design has been altered to prevent it happening anyway?
Standard shirt designs consist of five or six horizontal stripes or “hoops” in alternating colours. Football shirts traditionally have vertical stripes instead, apart from Q.P.R. who have always had a competition shirt with hoops – nobody seems to know why! As rugby is played mainly in winter, a cotton rugby kit can weigh around 6 lb when wet. This extra weight has to be carried by the player, in addition to running in wet, heavy ground, and this is why most competition shirts have an element of polyester in the fabric mix, because it doesn’t soak up water like cotton does.
Rugby World Cup winners 2003 photograph by Bombdog, used under a creative commons attribution licence
October 8th, 2007
