Tuesday, March 4, 2008

A-league Kits Update

I've had a couple of comments and requests regarding my previous blog (A-league Kits Could be Improved), so I'm going to do an update.

An anonymous Newcastle fan alerted me to the fact that Blue and Red are not really the traditional colours of Newcastle (although these colours are used by the Newcaslte Knights rugby team and were used by the old Newcastle Breakers NSL side), and that the different colours the Jets used were partly to highlight the difference between the Jets and the Knights - and for the Jets to form a seperate identity to the Knights. Thus I have a couple of other possible strips that Newcastle could use as an away kit.

The Brown/Green and White colour combination was used by Newcastle KB United many years ago, and it was suggested that I create an away kit based on these colours. I've had a couple of goes at it, The first kit is very similar to KB United's old strip (although it had a darker brown), the other two kits are variations - I'm undecided on which one I like best, there's no doubt they are attractive looking kits though. I'm not sure how likely it is that Newcastle would use one of these kits - green is not part of their logo, and is not one of the clubs colours - one of these would be a great third kit though.



Another request I had was to update Perth's away stip - personally I like the current Perth away kit, but here's a couple of variations - the look quite nice in my opinion, especially the orange one.

Over recent days, it has been a great dissapointment to hear that North Queensland's A-league bid appears to be unlikely to succeed - at least for season 4 of the A-league. The team lineup for next season's competition is now unknown - although the Gold Coast will still be pushing hard to be allowed in, even if it means we only have 9 A-league teams. Here are a couple of variations on my Gold Coast and North Queensland kits from my first blog. I would love to see the blue/green strip become North Queensland's home kit. The club seems commited to the red/black and white colours - of course the problems they have been having and the reported split means that could very well change. The yellow and blue Gold Coast kit might make a good away kit for them, part of the reason I previously gave them a yellow/green strip was because no other kits included any green, but as this blog update contains a few strips with green I thought that may no longer be necessary.

One of the rumors circulating with the possible failure of the North Queensland bid is that Wollongong may step in, here's my attempt at a Wollongong kit - the colours are a common combination in world football, and I believe they go together very well.

Since I was experimenting with kits for potential new teams, I thought I'd quickly whip up a Canberra kit (green and orange) and a kit for a potential Western Sydney kit (black and red). I don't know if either of these teams will ever enter the A-league, but I think both these kits look great. The Canberra kit is in the style of Werder Bremen of Germany, while the West Sydney kit is similar to that of Paris Saint-Germain.

I'm very much hoping that the Gold Coast (and their very impressive new stadium - checkout the picture below) and North Queensland will be a part of the A-league next year, but if one of the teams can not meet the FFA's requirements (and no replacement can be found), I certainly hope that the other is included - even the one extra team would mean a longer season - something desperately needed.

Matt

PS. Nice picture (click to enlarge) of the stadium where the Gold Coast Galaxy will play it's home games:


9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well done! Those new newcastle strips look great, definately think that either of the first 2 would make a wonderful second strip!

I agree with perths new orange and purple strip i think it looks good.

I also really like the red and black one which i think looks very schmick!

I dont know what team could ever use it but i think a vertical stripe (preferably red and white like sunderland, or a black and white like newcastle united) would look really cool!

I wonder why reebok dont have this much fun designing jerseys?

Anonymous said...

Nice work. I like the North Queensland red and black kit, but the Wollongong, Gold Coast and Newcastle kits are absolute ludicris. Gold Coast should have white shorts not yellow, Wollongong should stick to the Wolves traditional red and white strip and Newcastle should go to your old version the crimson and navy stripes.
But seriously, it would frankly be embarassing if a team wore such a crap strip like what you did for Gold Coast. I say they should have light blue with white shorts and light blue socks, like Napoli.

Mark & Matt said...

Just to be clear - are you talking about the predominantly yellow Gold Coast kit or the blue one? I really like the colour combination of royal blue/yellow - I think that's also something we don't have in the A-league yet.

Thanks for your comments.

Anonymous said...

I like the originality of the Werder Bremen style kit for Canberra, but I still feel that Canberra could follow the lead of other peoples clubs from the capital. Combining red and white like Olympiacos, Atletico Madrid, or Spartak Moskva. Interesting ideas, though. Kudos.

Anonymous said...

hey matt i really like what u are doing with the ideas for jersey designs.
im from western sydney, and i dnt want the strip to be tacky and ordinary like what they currently have.
i believe that it should contain elements from the powerful sydney clubs of the old nsl (being marconi, sydney united and sydney olympic). containing
history is something that the a-league is missing, and i think the only club using the history is queensland*brisbane* which uses orange because of the dutch heritage in queensland football.

i got some inspiration from u and thought of designing some designs over the past two days based on the heritage thing as a way of getting the club colours.

ill send it to u.

Anonymous said...

the 3 newcastle kits u made are really really good

all the rest you made looks horrible though. Especially the Werder Breman one looks like vomit.

Anonymous said...

Canberra will be all green, like the W-League kits. I think we'll have either a white, blue and yellow or all-white away kit.
Wollongong are traditionally red & white, and surely will be the Wolves again.
Townsville will surely emulate Milan in their kits.
Gold Coast should be interesting - orange and sky blue...

BTW: muchly excited for new kit releases! :)

Mark & Matt said...

Townsville will be green, actually. Happy to hear that all clubs will design their own strips next year, I have heard that Perth might be having the hoops like I suggested in one of my blogs.

Anonymous said...

The information here is great. I will invite my friends here.

Thanks