The Scarlets signed up with Macron last season, and fans with good memories will recall that they initially revealed the shirts with no main sponsor, adding WRW at the 11th hour – but if there’s one thing the 2018/19 home jersey is lacking, it’s sponsors…
Yup, the most talked about thing on this new Scarlets home shirt hasn’t been the design, but the fact that the kit as a whole has a whopping 18 different sponsors on it, including a scarcely believable 14 on the jersey itself.
In a season where the issue of sponsor-creep on jerseys has been something of a hot-button issue, it’s understandable that the sheer volume of logos here has rather dominated the conversation… and that’s a bit of a shame.
Because if you try to look past the Yellow Pages’ worth of brand names on the shirt, the underlying design is actually pretty cool.
So for starters we’ve got a proper old-school collar, with an interesting V-shaped placket, which we thing actually looks really cool, and is notably different from everything else Macron have done of late.
And the shirt itself actually has some really interesting design element to it – not including that weird yoke around the shoulders that all Macron shirts seem to have and looks, let’s be honest, shite.
So we like the dragon scales on the sleeves, the embedded Scarlets logo on the chest, and the pinstripe/tonal hoops combo that runs down the front and back of the design… on their own merits, they all look cool and really work.
But the problem is that it’s hard to notice any of these things in the face of quite so many bloody sponsors on it – and if you do, it only serves to add making this shirt look even more busy. We try to not let sponsors impact our opinions of jerseys as a rule, but in this case, it’s literally hard to see past it – given that the Scarlets are claiming this jersey is worth 70% more as a result, we imagine their fans will learn to live with it, but it’s not for us.
Rugby Shirt Watch 
The front really doesn’t look too bad in comparison to the back. Those sponsors look like a complete after thought and don’t seem to be treated with quite as much care.
Also the dragon and pinstripes look great. As do the scales on the sleeves. However there definitely seems to be a lack of cohesion between elements of the base design and logo applications. What a shame.
I personally can’t see/get past all of the sponsors. Considering that the team gets paid so much for these sponsorship deals, I am finding it ever increasingly difficult to pay to be a walking billboard for the sponsors. I like showing people what team I am a fan of, not of companies I have little to no interest in.