Since the Ospreys were founded in 2003, there’s been two things you could always rely on being true – that they were the best team in Wales, and that they played in all black. The last two seasons have demonstrated that the former is far from true any more, but could Canterbury about to be tearing up the latter?
Well, sort of. After giving the Ospreys one of the most crowd-pleasingly gorgeous shirts in the region’s history in their debut year, CCC was always likely to try something a bit different in 2018 – especially given the region’s long history of eye-catching designs.
But instead of adding in splashes of a one-and-done contrastingly bright colour for the new home shirt, Canterbury has again stuck to the Ospreys’ two main colours – black and white – but used the secondary colour in a bigger way than ever.
So instead of just a panel or insert in white, both sleeves are totally white, while the striking white latticework pattern that runs across the body of the jersey both front and back adds further white to the recipe. The only splash of colour is a cool bit of striking light blue running around the back of the collar.
It’s a striking and different look for a region that has placed a lot of emphasis on black being the bedrock of their brand in recent years, and we understand what some people mean when they say it looks like a training jersey.
But we don’t agree. To us, it has more of a cool baseball t-shirt vibe – especially working in tandem with the new ring-style collar. The pattern on the front is striking and totally unique, and the whole thing comes together to create one of the most interesting – but undeniably polarising – Ospreys shirts in years. And for a team with the Ospreys track record for daring to be different, that’s quite an achievement.
Rugby Shirt Watch 