It’s fair to say that when we reviewed the new Olympic Club shirt from Canterbury, it certainly caused a stir on our social media channels, with some truly inappropriate lustful language being uttered in the direction of that jersey. The Pacific Rugby Premiership is the place to go for gorgeous, unusual rugby shirts it seems, and this new Denver Barbarians shirt is no exception.
The Barbos are one of two teams in the Pacific Rugby Premiership based outside California, but they’re one of the older clubs in the tournament, having been in existence since 1967. That might not be quite as old as the ‘hang on, are you sure about that?!’ oldness of Olympic Club, who have been playing since 1908, but it again reminds us that, yes, rugby has been played in the States for quite some time now. It’s not all Space Rugby y’know?
For the bulk of their history, the Barbarians have played in green and white hoops – a combo that is rather hard to argue with, as anyone who’s seen what Bennetton Treviso have trotted out in over the last few years will no doubt attest.
This however, isn’t your average hooped design. Nope, each of the green of the hoops here is actually made up of seven thin stripes, which is yet another spin on the format, in a season that has seen an absolute shitload of them.
If you’re looking at this shirt and thinking it looks familiar, well, you’re not alone. We racked our brains and eventually realised where we’d seen a very similar design before, and if it, of course, the current Celtic FC home shirt from Nike. In fact it’s such a similar design, both shirts have even use seven thin green stripes to a hoop. Weird.
Before we finish up, a word about the club badge. Yes, it’s obviously a pretty faithful, ahem, tribute to the Barbarian FC badge, but do we really care? In an era where it seems like so many clubs have fuck-ugly, dated badges that were designed at the dawn of Millennium with little thought given to matters asides from ensuring that the club had a unique logo they could trademark and make money off, it’s so nice to see something so simple and classic-looking. We wish more clubs would follow suit.
We’ve said it before, but the Pacific Rugby Premiership is home to some of the nicest and most unusual shirt designs we’ve seen this year – it’s part of the reason we’re giving such a small league the time of day.
This Denver Barbarians shirt might owe a fair debt to this year’s Celtic shirt, but the results are hard to argue with. Like all the other Pacific Rugby Premiership shirts this season, they’re available exclusively from our retail partner WorldRugbyShop.com, so you’ll know where to go if the green and white hoops look is for you…
SHIT/GOOD RATING: A Denver Nugget
Rugby Shirt Watch 
