Italy Rugby have always lucked out in the jersey stakes – there’s something about that brilliant blue jersey and the red, white and green badge that just screams timeless cool – in truth it’s a hard one to mess up.
And so when Macron took over from Adidas last year, it wasn’t a huge surprise to see that Macron absolutely smashed it on their first go, adding a nice splash of gold to spice things up, too.
But getting it right straight from the off is the easy part, really (though don’t tell LCS that, ahem…) when you’ve signed an eight-year deal like Macron have, you have to keep iterating.
And so is the case with the 2018/19 home shirt – though not all of it is successful. There’s no doubt that the wing-tip collar that debuted on the new change strip is distinctive, but we’re not sure it works (though it looks better here than it did on the all-which alternate)
Much more successful, however, is the elasticated red, white and green panel on the underside of the sleeve. It adds a nice splash of extra Italy to proceedings without being too intrusive or tacky, and we really like it.
It’s the sort of understated design flourish that test jerseys simple have to have, as the scope for doing much else different is often limited. And while we still don’t quite understand that collar, on the whole this is a pretty decent second effort.
Rugby Shirt Watch 