Under Armour have a fairly large presence in the Rugby World Cup. While they’ve got a very small rugby portfolio compared to many kit suppliers, the US sportswear giant has three teams featuring at the Rugby World Cup – more than the likes of Nike, Kukri, ASICS and Kooga – all names that are more widely associated with our sport. They’ve clearly picked their teams carefully then, and as such we’ve seen fair few UA designs recently.
Canada became the second national side to sign up with Under Armour last season, and while their first shirt designs were pretty nice, they were a little, well, plain and samey, and it wasn’t a massively different story when we checked out the Canada Rugby World Cup home shirt a few weeks ago.
Again, Under Armour’s propensity for heavily templated designs made the shirt ring more than a few bells with the Wales World Cup shirt, but it was different enough that we could appreciate it on its own merits as a very clean, very old-school design.
What of this new alternate shirt, then? Well, the big change from the previous Canada change shirt is the colour of course – black has given way to white here, and beyond that it’s mainly a straight white for red and vice versa.
That’s not a bad thing of course – the home shirt was a decent design, and we think the red cuffs, collar and under arms here provides a nice contrast. If we were to be critical, we’d say that the plain nature of the design makes this look a bit t-shirty in white, but we will take plain over some of the shirts Canada have worn in past Rugby World Cups…
It’s also worth noting that up close, it’s not as plain as it looks from afar, as it has the same funky maple leaf grip tape that we saw on the home shirt.
So, a very clean, very plain design, that’s not really any different to the home shirt – a little underwhelming? Maybe, but we think this shirt still looks good, though we think black might have been a better colour, though then the Wales comparisons would have been ever more pronounced!
SHIT/GOOD RATING: Good
Images courtesy of Lovell Rugby
Rugby Shirt Watch 
Too plain, and as a Canadian I wanted so much more….