The French have something of a baffling relationship with rugby sevens. For a team so blessed with creative backs and dynamic, exciting loose forwards they’re generally a bit, well, shit at it… France finished 10th in the IRB Sevens Series in 2014, and lost out to the USA in the Bowl final in the first leg of this year’s series in Australia. It’s hardly world-beating form, and yet, when they rock up at the Dubai tournament this week, they’ll be hard to miss…
Yes, fresh off creating a bold and unconventional look for the 15s team this year, Adidas have sprung something altogether more out there for the sevens team. At various times over the last few years, we’ve made gags about jerseys that have a bit of a ‘Superman’s Fortress Of Solitude‘ vibe to them, but this one is going the whole nine yards.
We’re not entirely sure what the purpose of the jagged, icicle-like motif on the front of the shirt is supposed to represent, really, but it certainly fulfils the minimum requirement for sevens jerseys that they’re basically fucking batshit. The two shades of blue provide some nice subtle contrast on an entirely unsubtle design, and we like the way the shoulder stripes are rendered in a darker shade of their respective colour, making them less overt than they are on the 15s shirt.
Round the back, it all goes a bit wrong, however. Say what you like about the crazy ice shard shit on the front – at least it was bafflingly interesting. This on the other hand looks as though the wearer should be strapping on a sword and heading out to tournament, we’re not sure we should be encouraging the Renaissance look on the rugby field, but let’s go with it.
Sevens, as we’ve said many times before, is the place where we want to see weird and wonderful, and this certainly hits the mark there. We’ll level with you and say we really didn’t like this shirt at first, but the more we’ve seen it, the more it’s weird-ass charms bewitched us. We still don’t really know what’s going on here with the icicle things, but sometimes ignorance is bliss!
SHIT/GOOD RATING: GOOD
Rugby Shirt Watch 
It’s better than their new XV shirt, but that’s a very low bar.