Australia’s 2010 World Cup Kit

Here are the rumoured home and away shirts that the Socceroos will wear in South Africa. Judge for yourself, but I’m happy they’ve tried to mix it up a bit. It does look a lot like a Cricket or Rugby shirt though:

Higher Res: http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/5711/aus20105.png

The kit is expected to be worn from 2010 until 2012. It will probably be worn first in the farewell match that will be played at the MCG in May.

Matt.

2009-10 A-league Kits Released

Last Week, 8 out of the 10 Hyundai A-league clubs new kit were released. Still no word on Brisbane or the Gold Coast’s kits – but here’s a lot at those that were revealed:

Adelaide:Adelaide’s home kit is fairly similar to previous years, although there does appear to be some sort of pinstripe pattern – hard to tell from the low res images though. Looks good though. The away kit is a little retro, but is a nice change.

Central Coast:

No surprise here, we have already seen this kit. They really should fix the back of the home kit – the player name looks silly going over the stripes. They should really just make the top half of the back of the kit plain yellow, with a blue name and number. (similar to Perth’s kit – see below)

Melbourne:

Melbourne goes with a fairly standard strip, the V looks a little thinner than it used to, which is good. The little v’s running down the side are somewhat odd, but shouldn’t look too bad on the final kit. The away kit is white, rather than silver – looks good though.

Newcastle:

Newcastle will not use their Champions League kit in next year’s A-league. Their kit will, in fact, be very similar to their kit from last year. They’ve gone with a blue away kit, which looks good although I would have liked to have seen a blue/red away kit.

North Queensland:

North Queensland kit was leaked last week. This design looks quite bright, but I think the actual kit will look better than this looks on paper.

Perth:

Perth have gone the vertical stripes for next season, while I would have preferred hoops (just because we already have a couple of other teams in vertical stripes), this kit looks great. Again, I expect the actual kit to look better than the kit does on paper, because this design is quite bright. I think this is more accurate to what it will actually look like:

 

Sydney FC:

Sydney’s kit is fairly standard, but it certainly looks good. You can’t have everyone wearing an ‘interesting’ kit.

Wellington:

Wellington’s striped kit looks excellent. Their away kit is very nice as well. They have done the same thing as Central Coast with their player names going over their stripes, which is the only problem I have with this kit.

Gold Coast, Brisbane:

These are the only two clubs yet to have their kits released, the delay for Brisbane might be related to their name-change from Queensland, while Gold Coast evidently are still working on theirs.

Here’s a couple of mock-ups I’ve done, I have a feeling that Brisbane will go with the maroon, while I think the Gold Coast might go with a predominantly yellow kit – although I prefer the teal.

Clashes:

One interesting thing to consider about the new kits is potential clashes. I imagine that most sides will wear their home shirt as much as possible, with their away kit ready as an alternative when required. Consider some examples though – what happens when:

Wellington hosts Central Coast?
Central Coast plays Newcastle?

Interestingly the only solution to these clashes might force the home team to wear their away strip. This is why, in Europe, a lot of sides (especially those with stripes) have to have 3 kits, to ensure that they can always provide an alternative strip to the home team. I wonder what the solution will be for the A-league?

Summary:

It’s great to see A-league clubs without the standard template kits this season. I also look forward to seeing an away team that isn’t wearing white.

These kits will likely be unveiled officially on Monday, when the A-league draw is released.

Matt

North Queensland Fury Kit Revealed

North Queensland’s inaugural A-league kit has been leaked – here’s my mock-up of it (from the low resolution pics that were leaked):

It looks a little odd, but I like the combination of light/dark green. The back of the kit is mainly light green.

Matt

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:

Perth Glory:

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

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:

A-league Kits Could be Improved

Another season of the Hyundai A-league has concluded, and what a season it's been. Big crowds, classic matches, lots of spectacular goals. Next season promises to be another year of improvement for the league - two new teams are set to enter the competition (the Gold Coast Galaxy and North Queensland Thunder), which will mean an extra game will take place each week and the season will last a bit longer.

One thing I would like to see improved in the A-league (it may not be the biggest issue the A-leauge faces, but I think it's something the fans are quite interested in) is the quality and variety of the kits that the teams wear. The home kits are generally quite good, although plain, however 7 out of the 8 teams have a predominantly white away kits. For those of us who go often attend our local A-league team's matches, this means we always see the same colour teams.

For the next season of the A-league, Reebok will be redesigning the away shirts for many of the A-league teams, they will also be creating new kits for the two new sides. As a result I have decided to have a go myself - and see if I can create a bit more variety and a few more interesting kits for the (soon to be) 10 A-league sides. I have kept most of the current home kits the same, apart from a couple of teams which I have decided could do with a new home kit as well.

For the record, I would like the league to continue with it's policy of forcing teams to wear away kits whenever they are playing away from home (in the regular A-league season), however as some of my new away kits would create clashes there will have to be exceptions to that rule.

Adelaide United

The home kit is the same as it is now, while the away kit is predominantly yellow. I think the away kit has a nice look to it, although it does clash with the Central Coast's home strip, meaning Adelaide would always need to wear their home strip against the Mariners.

Central Coast Mariners

I've kept these kits exactly the same. The current Mariners kits are some of the more interesting ones in the league and they look great.

Melbourne Victory

Again I've kept these kits the same. Melbourne are really the only club to have a distinctive style to their shirt (with the V), and this should not be changed (although a slight change might be a good idea).

Newcastle United Jets

Newcastle's gold home kit looks very nice so I have kept it the same, however I would like to see the 'traditional' colours of Newcastle (the red and blue) used in the away kit - stripes would look great. Potentially you could use the red and blue for the home colours.

Perth Glory

Perth is largely unchanged, although I've added hoops, which I think looks great and gives them a slightly new image - something they desperately need.

Queensland Roar

I'm sure most would agree that the current Queensland kit looks terrible. The colours of Orange and Marooan can go together and look great, but Queensland have done a shocking job of it with their current strip. I believe my attempt is a lot better, mainly because it is simple. I've used the blue as an away kit.

Sydney FC

I've kept Sydney's kit's the same - the relatively plain, sky-blue home strip is perfect for them and their away kit has always been one of my favourite A-league strips.

Wellington Phoenix

Wellington fans were hoping for black and yellow stripes for their first season in the A-league, hopefully after Wellington proved that they could pull a decent crowd reebok might oblige - it can't be that hard to take a kit and add stripes to it. Their current away kit is fine.

Now it's a little harder to attempt to design kits for the new A-league sides, the Gold Coast Galaxy and North Queensland Thunder - it is not even 100% confirmed that both sides will enter the A-leauge next season. Both sides have, however, tentitavely announced their colours - the Thunder will use red, black and white while the Galaxy will be yellow and blue.

Gold Coast Galaxy

Blue and Yellow go together very well, and I've given them a sash in the style of one of Boca Juniors' classic strips. I decided to add green trimming to their home kit, and then use it, along with yellow, for the away strip - I did this mainly becuase no other A-league side has green in any of their kits.

North Queensland Thunder

North Queensland said their colours of red, black and white were inspired by Manchester United - so I expect their kit will look a little like that of the red devils, I've given them a black away strip.

As I said earlier, this is not a massive issue for the A-leauge, but I'm sure that most A-leauge fans would like to see a little more variety when it comes to A-leauge kits. The various different colours of away strips and shorts would mean that sides will have to be a little more flexible when it comes to the uniform they wear. For example, North Queensland would have to wear their home kit when they travel to Melbourne - and when Perth travels to Queensland they should wear their away shirt, with their home purple shorts - otherwise both sides would have the same colour shorts, which would be annoying for TV viewers.

Now obviously these aren't going to be the exact kits that we see next year, but I certainly hope that Reebok and the A-league sides are a little more creative than in the past - and I also hope they take a look at a couple of home kits and decide to update those as well as doing a comprehensive update of away kits.

Here's an image of all my kits together (click to enlarge):

Bye for now,

Matt