If you’re looking at this Cardiff Blues shirt and thinking ‘hang on, I’ve seen this before… well you’re not wrong. Yes, the Blues stuck with 2013/14’s home and alternate shirts for the 2014/15 season, in a refreshing bit of restraint from Canterbury and Cardiff in this age of shirts barely lasting a team one season. Is that a good thing though? Well, read on…

Of course it’s a bloody good thing – would you just LOOK at that thing up there? We named this shirt our favourite of the year last season, and the more we see of it, the more we think it might be one of our favourite shirts ever.

Cardiff bringing hoops into the equation was a little bit of a controversial – the Blues are not Cardiff RFC after all, and while these hoops aren’t blue and black, they’re close enough to that club’s classic look that it was hardly going to do wonders for any Blues fans who didn’t have a strong affinity for that club, namely fans of Pontypridd and other feeder clubs for the Blues region, who aren’t exactly its biggest fans to begin with…

But when the results are this spectacular, who really cares? We love hoops, of course we do, everyone does… and this is just SUCH a well-executed shirt, lovely colours, lovely clean design – what more could you ask for.

While the home shirt is a perfect example of how to design a classic modern rugby shirt, the alternate jersey has a substantially more modern aesthetic. But that’s not a bad thing at all.

The blue fade moving up the shirt, keeps the region’s name close to mind, while the the curved white lines add some dynamism while making sure that it’s not so blue that it doesn’t provide a contrast to the home design.

One significant change for the 2014/15 Blues shirts compared to last season’s vintage is the main sponsor. Rather annoyingly, mid-way through last season, chest sponsor EADS changed their name to ‘Airbus Group’ – so we endured half a season of the Blues lovely, lovely shirts with a really ugly patch with the latter written over the former. Thankfully, this year the new name has been swapped in, and so we’re free to enjoy both shirts as they were intended.

The away shirt, while not being anything life-changing, is a nice, modern, tasteful shirt that we’re really big fans of. The home shirt is something else, however – a gorgeous, classic-yet-modern design that makes the Blues look good, even if their play hasn’t reflected it at times over the last two years. One of our all-time favourite modern shirt designs.

SHIT/GOOD RATING: SIMPLY THE BEST