2009-10 A-league Kits
A couple of weeks ago we heard some good news about the kits for next season’s A-league. Firstly, each club will have new kits next season – both home and away. Not only that, but Reebok (who still have exclusive designing rights to the A-league strips for the next two years) will finally allow clubs more freedom when designing their strips.
The good news just keeps coming, as it has also been confirmed that the FFA’s policy of white away kits has been done away with. Finally, although I’m not sure of this one, clubs are likely to be allowed to wear their home strips for all games, except when avoiding a clash with the home team.
I called for many of these changes a year ago, in my blog: 'A-league kits could be improved'. After hearing this latest news, I thought I’d do some new mock-ups and do some speculation on what we might see next season:
Central Coast:
The first kits for the new season have already been revealed, with the Central Coast Mariners releasing their kits for the 2009 AFC Champions League, which they will also use in next season’s A-league. When the first images of this kit were released, Mariners fans were a little disappointed at the lack of yellow, however I think (with the back of the kit being yellow), the kits will look a lot more yellow at matches than they did when the initial press images were released. Here are there home and away kits:
Adelaide United:
Some details of Adelaide’s new kits have already surfaced. Apparently the home kit will have some sort of ‘knitted effect’. This sounds a little weird to me, but I think I’ve made a pretty good guess at what this will look like. Also, United will have a black away kit next year, which I’ve done as well:
For the rest of the clubs I’ve only done home kits, hopefully the FFA will no longer require teams to wear alternate kits for every away match next season, so we will mainly only see home kits anyway. (perhaps there will be a part 2 to this blog)
Gold Coast United:
The Gold Coast’s home uniform will be yellow and blue, while their away strip will be white. I’d like to see them use the ‘aqua’ blue as their main colour for their home strip – something like this would look good IMO:
Melbourne Victory:
You certainly won’t be seeing the ‘V’ disappearing from the Melbourne kit any time soon, I think this one looks a little better than their current uniform though:
Newcastle United Jets:
Newcastle’s AFC Champions League strip will be revealed fairly soon, this is what it will look like (apparently). Whether or not this strip will also be used in next seasons A-league is still unconfirmed.
North Queensland Fury:
North Queensland Fury (a name that may yet be changed before they begin their inaugural season – fingers crossed), will use green and white as their colours. I’m very happy to finally see a little green in the A-league, something like this would look good:
I used the idea of having white horizontal stripes on the Perth kit in my blog last year. The info I’ve seen says that this is quite likely to become reality next season. For my mock-up, I've tried to be a little more subtle with the horizontal stripes, making them only slightly lighter than the dark purple.
Queensland Roar:
Some fans have been calling for a maroon strip next season for Queensland. I still like the idea of Queensland in orange, so I decided to go half-and-half. I also brought back the blue shorts, which Queensland had in their first couple of seasons.
Sydney FC:
Sydney will apparently have a much plainer sky-blue kit next season. Will probably look something like this:
Wellington Phoenix:
Wellington will finally be in yellow and black stripes next year. Frankly, I think there’s very little chance this strip will look bad. My mock-up has more black than yellow, which I think keeps the kit looking a bit darker - like their current kit.
Well, there you go. I’m pretty confident that next year we’ll see a dramatic improvement in A-league kits. Even just the fact we’ll see games where neither team is wearing white will be a big step forward.
I can’t wait to see all the new designs.
Bye for now,
Matt
