For the last few years, Edinburgh Rugby have been lumbered with the reputation of being the ‘other’ Scottish Pro12 team. Asides from an entirely baffling trip to the Heineken Cup semi-finals a few years back, the team that used to be called the Gunners have very much been in the shadow of their rivals down the M8, Glasgow Warriors. They’ve caused a bit of a stir in the opening round of this year’s Guinness Pro12 however, stunning Munster at Thomond Park by a point, so can things be different for them this year? Will any success they have be cruelly undermined by rubbish shirts? Well, read on…
To put it mildly, there wasn’t a lot to love about Edinburgh last season. On the pitch they were, for the most part, a bit of a shambles. On the plus side, however, they were doing it wearing some very, very handsome shirts indeed. The alternate shirt, in particular, was a work of art of narrow hoopy goodness, although it looked a bit crap with the red shorts, we have to say…
This time around, it seems that Macron have decided that trying to capture that sort of lightning in a bottle awesomeness two years on the bounce was a bit much to ask, and instead gone for the most spartan look you could possibly imagine.
Yup, take a good look ladies and gents, that is one plain, plain kit… We were a bit sniffy about how witheringly plain Lyon’s Macron shirts this season were a few weeks back, but honestly, this makes those kits look like something a Rio Carnival dancer would wear on a night out by comparison…
It’s perfectly nice and inoffensive – as with this season’s London Irish shirts, we can’t say this is a bad shirt, or an ugly shirt, it’s perfectly acceptable and we’re sure that fans will really dig its simplicity.
But… as with those London Irish shirts, from a shirt design point of view, it’s very uninspiring – how can we make jokes about what is basically a plain black tshirt with a red collar. Asides from to say that we hate the damn thing just as much as we did on the Glasgow shirts this year, stupid stunted, wannabe Cantona affair that it is…
Thankfully, unlike the aforementioned London Irish and Lyon shirts, the alternate kit suffers from no such problems…
As dull and unexciting as the home shirt is, the alternate is interesting, exciting and different – we absolutely love it.
If you’ve read this site for very long, you’ll be well acquainted with our deep love affair with classic hoops, and while Edinburgh don’t exactly have a large amount of club heritage, having only existed since 1996, the use of three colours for the hoops gives this shirt a real classic, pre-professional era vibe that we really love.
At the same time, the use of red, black and white feels distinctly modern, setting it firmly apart, colour palette-wise from the likes of Bath, Leicester and the likes. It’s a classic design with a very modern feel about it, sort’ve like one of those posh new Rolls Royces you see footballers swanning about in, but without providing the ‘What an absolute dickhead’ Pavlovian response whenever you see one…
Even the stupid ‘polo’ collar doesn’t look quite as big an offensive this time around – it’s winning all over.
So two shirts that are both classy, classic and tasteful, then – but with very different approaches to design. We’re a little uninspired with the home shirt, we have to say – it’s another one of those ‘too plain for its own good’ affairs – but just because it’s not very exciting, doesn’t mean it’s a bad shirt at all.
The alternate shirt, on the other hand, is everything we like to see in a modern design – contemporary, yet classic, it ticks all our boxes. Nice.
Rugby Shirt Watch 
