Over the last few seasons, Montpellier have risen from Top 14 bottom dwellers to playoff contenders and Heineken Cup regulars. Indeed, the Mediterranean side finished second in the Top 14 table last season, and now boast a squad full of international stars from all over the rugby world. And as they’ve climbed the rugby ladder, they’ve done so wearing some pretty er, interesting shirt designs…
This year’s offering is no exception. First of all, as with pretty much every modern club rugby shirt, the on-field design will be significantly busier than the image above – there’ll be sponsors aplenty all over the shop no doubt, but this current pre-sponsor design does give us a chance to appreciate this shirt on its own merits.
First up, you have to say, Montpellier’s colour scheme is hard to argue with – the two shades of blue with white accents is undeniably classy. It’s just a pity that they couldn’t use those colours to make something a little more… well… nice.
As with so many kits, this could have been a really nice design, if not for the designers taking things a little far. We really like the contrast of the dark blue chequerboard pattern with the diagonal light blue stripes – that could have been a really interesting, unusual design. Instead of making the stripes even however, they’ve opted for this odd jagged, uneven this with wiggly white lines.
It sadly takes the shirt from original and classy into something that looks a little tacky. We’ll be glad to see the sponsors pile up on this bad boy to cover things up a little.
The alternate shirt though… well… it makes any tacky over-complication on the home shirt look like the height of taste and decency by comparison. We mean, just look at this mess…
Again, there’s a perfectly nice shirt in here underneath it all – we’re just not sure why they’ve tried to ruin it in such an abstract and weird way. What exactly is that nonsense all over the front supposed to be, anyway? Crosses? Cogs? Snowflakes? Anyone?
Whatever it was intended to look like, it actually looks more like they’ve a toddler some blue Smarties and let go to town on the shirt with some crayons.
It doesn’t even really start anywhere… it sort of just fades in randomly halfway up, then abruptly stops around middle of the chest. It’s honestly one of the weird shirt sublimations we’ve seen on a shirt, and without doubt the most ugly.
Montpellier has a fantastic colour scheme to work with as a base, it’s a shame that Puma seems intent on taking those perfect ingredients an producing a shit sandwich. Merde indeed.
Rugby Shirt Watch 
How can I get a 2014/15 Montpellier European jersey. Black and gold.