Pretty In Pink?

How simple things used to be.

The days of the baggy cotton shirt with nothing but the colour and the team crest to separate them from the rest are long gone.

David Sole - understated

Following the transition to professionalism, corporate moneymaking minds turned their attention to the growing sports Market that was rugby. Both domestic and national rugby shirts became adorned with logos, branding and multi colours. Not since the British & Irish Lions crest was first sewn on to a red top had they become so colourful.

The technology changed too. As the major sportswear companies competed to make each nations strips, the quest for the new style, leading edge and material difference heated up. Who else remembers the furore in 1999 when the All Blacks turned up to the World Cup with special 'grippy' panels on their shirts, introduced by Adidas? Now we see them everywhere. Shirts are now super-tight and made out of all sorts of exotic synthetics to aid the players and prevent the opposition getting a good hold on them.

Jonah Lomu sporting the controversial

All Black shirt from 1999

The quest for eccintricity has also inspired some interesting strip designs. When Stade Francais first introduced their pink strip a few years back, it was seen as ridiculous by many that 15 'tough' men could be seen running around a field wearing bright pink.

Edinburgh had a go for a couple of years, releasing a multicoloured strip especially for the 1872 Cup clashes with rivals Glasgow.

Edinburgh's 1872 Cup shirt

National teams started looking at differnt colours to use for their away shirts. Who remembers Scotland's orange strip for the 1999 RWC, made by Cotton Oxford?

The latest offering from South African Super 15 team the Bulls is as garish as any that has gone before. A luminescent pink, it has attracted controversy in South Africa for having certain overtones and entertaining innuendo.  How ridiculous! I'm all for teams setting themselves apart from the rest, and if their strip design helps them do that, then why not?

Habana & Co. will sport this new strip for the Bulls

What do you think, have strips changed for the good? What are your favourites?