Field Theory by Hadyn Green

Hey so what happens when you follow your international travel with a chest infection? Not a lot of writing it turns out. This uniform competition has officially gone on too long, and like a 40min boat race, it’s time to call an end.

The best rugby uniform in the world right now is (drum roll)… The All Blacks!

And it was a huge victory with the national team taking 70% of the vote against a uniform that I thought was the worst of the NZ super franchises. So adidas’ #1 jersey is #1 overall. Look at how pretty it is in black and white and red!

The other winner is the person who picks up the three bags of Eden Coffee coffee beans for putting their name down for the vote. And that winner (by random number generator) is: Dave Patrick! Dave voted for (I’m sure he wouldn’t be embarrassed by my printing his private votes in public) France over New Zealand and I salute him for it.

Dave drop me a line via the email link below and I’ll sort out getting that coffee to you.

Thanks to everyone who entered. It’s been a fun little exercise and an eye opening/watering one in some cases, hope yall had as much fun as I did.

This is why we can’t have nice things. I mean, I go away for a week (to Brunei, story about that coming up) and leave the voting on the uniform bracket open for a lot longer than I expected to and then I come back to this…

In the match-up between the Chiefs and the Crusaders, the glorious red and black simple uniforms of Canterbury lost to the orange, black and gold of the Chiefs 56%-44%. As much as I love my Chiefs, their uniform does look like it’s sponsored by McDonald’s.

Meantime over in the international jersey competition, New Zealand’s black jersey with three white letters on the chest (that aren’t “NZL”) took on the beautiful royal blue throw back French uniforms. New Zealand won that one 58%-42%.

Sigh. I knew that my two favourites (France, Stormers) wouldn’t make it; I just wasn’t sure how betrayal would taste.

In all seriousness though, I think it says a lot about the various jersey makers and designers that our top four were all adidas strips and that Nike, Reebok and Kooga have a long way to go in terms of rugby uniform design. Canterbury is ok, but what is with all the piping?

In the international jerseys big broad strokes of colour (France, NZ, South Africa, England) always seem to fair better than bitsy “clever” designs (US, Scotland, Australia) and it’s similar at the franchise level where the solid colours of NZ teams won out over the odd colour combos from South Africa. Also no one likes Australia, sorry Australia.

So what are our two finalists like?

Chiefs: All black front chest panel, yellow sleeve panels with red trim, collar and under-arm panels. Names of the feeder provinces listed around the collar, and embossed Maori design around the midriff.

The red and yellow seem brighter than the Waikato ITM cup jersey, though that might just be because of the orientation. There is a giant BNZ ad on the front but it’s plain white and it’s hard to knock a franchise for having advertising.

The away strip simply replaces the black with white swaps the black for white and swaps the red and yellow around (adding red to the inside of the "cleavage" too). The adidas and Chiefs logo are changed a little too however the BNZ logo suddenly becomes blue which makes no goddamn sense whatsoever. The away strip also looks a lot more like the players are working the grill at Maccas.

New Zealand: All black… because y’know. Ok, maybe not all black, there is that white collar. On the inside of the collar are the words “World Champions” along with 1987 and 2011. There are no seams, the jersey is a tube. The All Blacks are a series of tubes (this is a joke I am recycling).

I’m sure we’re all aware of my thoughts on the “AIG” that sits on the front. As sponsors logos go, it’s fairly inoffensive, the idea of having a logo on the front is far more so. I know we used to have worse sponsors logos but for some reason you lose some of your mythos once you add a corporation to your shirt. The only hope we have is that the alternate white strip keeps the AIG in white too.

I’m not sure if Quade Cooper was expecting boos, when he took the field last week. I mean, it was a home game.

Originally the boos were a form of protest after Cooper’s “brilliant” idea to niggle (and there is no better word for it than that) Richie McCaw in 2011. We booed not so much at Cooper antagonising a helpless McCaw (Brad Thorne was there to help clean up, after all), but for what seemed to be poor sportsmanship. The annoying bugger, who was a fairly good player, now seemed to be specifically going out of his way to be annoying. But since then the “fairly good player” part of Quade Cooper seems to have dropped off.

It must weigh on a young guy like Cooper (25). At the height of your career you had the same profile as a bad guy in professional wrestling. At least he’s better than Jesse Mogg. Though I think Rich Irvine said it best in his latest Sport Review cartoon:

(Click for the punchline.)

So yeah, it’s probably time to stop the booing. I remember the press conference where a gleeful Graham Henry, when asked about the booing, said that New Zealanders will stop when they want to and that Cooper probably deserved it. Yes he did, but that time has passed, and so has the best part of his career. Perhaps we need to shout something different:

In a corollary, Alex Rodriguez is on the end of some deserved booing from opposition fans. (For those who don’t know, A-Rod has been suspended for a record length of time for using PEDs, but is still playing because he’s appealing the length of the ban). At a recent game against the Red Sox he was hit by a pitch in his first at-bat.

The reason I bring up this moment is because he wasn’t hit by the first pitch, but only because the pitcher was terrible. He was hit by the fourth pitch. All four pitches were inside and close and all were intentional.

It’s worth noting that the pitcher was warned but not thrown out, while Yankees manager Joe Girardi was thrown out for arguing. Have a listen to Girardi on why he defended his player so angrily more than you might expect from a coach who's under attack from that player’s lawyers.

Girardi’s comments at the end speaks volumes about sports fan culture at its ugliest:

“What is wrong with people? You cheer when someone gets hit? Y'know I'm gonna say it again, what if that was your son? Y'know, what if your son got hit? Breaks an arm, gets hit in the head has a concussion? Man, I'd be embarrassed... Wonder what's wrong with our world today.”

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As a quick note, I'm out of the country fighting for your freedoms at the latest round of the TPP negotiations this week, so you all get an extension on your uniform voting.  

(As of Friday, NZ and the Chiefs have very slim leads over their rivals)

The results are in and I’m… well I’m not surprised, a little disheartened maybe.

In Keith Ng-esque graphical form here are the numbers:

As you can see, in the Super Rugby results the numbers were close with the Chiefs and the Crusaders scraping through by very narrow margins. While in the international category New Zealand beat the tenacious green jersey of South Africa and France had a convincing victory over the white of England.

I’m a little sad that the Stormers wonderful blue and white striped uniform has been bumped off by the Chiefs dark and stormy red and black uniform. Speaking of red and black, the Chiefs will be playing the Crusaders in a rematch of the Super Rugby semi-final this year.

I went back and checked, when the two teams play neither wear their away strips. This seems to be because the component parts of the uniforms clash enough and because the Crusaders have a more vibrant red than the Chiefs darker colours.

Funny enough, I had run this competition a few years back the Chiefs would’ve beaten the Crusaders easily. What were they thinking with that sword? Of course both would’ve lost to the Blues, but that’s by the by.

In the international match up, the “all” black jersey (Caution: jersey may contain up to 20% more white than previously experienced) has been on a very easy run so far with no real competition. Suddenly it finds itself up against the retro, royal blue styling of the French jersey.

The French are a first tier rugby nation with no jersey sponsor. The only one. New Zealand, as I have continually griped about, is no longer on that list. But let’s look at the good things about these jerseys.

• Essentially the jerseys are identical in construction and the construction is amazing. Both of these jerseys represent the best uniforms (construction-wise) for rugby, in the world.
• The stripes that adidas normally run along the shoulders are absent on the AB jersey and on the French jersey they sit along the collar bone and create the tricolor. The French version is a subtle variation on what is a big corporation’s signature. Whereas the All Black’s plain black is a sign of respect from adidas (which makes the AIG thing even more annoying).
• The French have returned to the royal French blue rather than the darker shades they had under Nike. It seems so much more Gallic and harks back to their best uniforms.
• Yes I am plugging the French, but the All Black jersey is still pretty good. It hasn’t been completely ruined yet. Just as a reminder this is what the NZ uniforms used to look like (like waaay back in 2011). Or in gif format:
  
  
• It was odd hearing the ground announcer on the weekend call out the score at halftime for the "Qantas Wallabies". No national identity there. If it ever becomes the "AIG All Blacks", I might just quit.

Before I get to the voting form, this weekend just gone there was a test match I should probably mention.

Wasn’t it scrappy? There were some very good things to come out of it sure, like the fact that we won. And, despite the All Blacks looking rusty as hell, it was a convincing win.

Certain big name players ::cough::Israel Dagg::cough:: were invisible for most of the game and our line out needs a LOT of work. The scrums were the oddest part of the game and were just awful. Worse still, we weren’t very good at them. I couldn’t understand the continual “not straight” calls either.

It seems to be part of a worrying trend from referees to not understand relational motion as many forward passes (on both sides) went uncalled in a similar fashion to the ones missed in the Super Rugby final.

I felt that this would be a big game for the All Blacks. All of the build-up seemed to imply that they wanted to make a statement with this game and to rack up a large score. Whenever an interviewer asked about the new Wallabies coach the line was always the same “it doesn’t matter”. The feeling was that the All Blacks didn’t want there to be any glitches nothing for the media hang on to and say “Wallabies rally behind new coach”.

And then there was Quade Cooper. Tweets from inside the stadium suggested it was not solely kiwi fans doin’ the booin’ and I can understand Australian fans frustration. With a new coach in place the last thing they want to see is the underperforming #10 from the last team.

Personally I’m not a big fan of booing a player just because he’s on the field/has the ball (trying to distract him from a task like kicking is different) and I wish the fans who do it would knock it off. Cooper’s just not that important anymore.

Finally, look how awesome these old Aussie uniforms are!

 

The results from the second round are in and there’s been a few upsets. By upsets I mean that I am upset that people don’t agree with me, but I’ll get over it.

Super Rugby:

• The Stormers came off their first round bye to trounce the Cheetahs 70-23
• The Chiefs came back from after an early surge from Auckland to beat the Blues 48-46
• The Highlanders comfortably beat the Kings 64-29
• And in the final match the Crusaders fought back from a first half deficit to beat the Hurricanes 52-41

International Rugby:

• It didn’t look good for the French, going into the weekend the Irish had a comfortable lead, but a late rally saw Les Bleus squeeze past 54-41
• It just isn’t the best year for Australia when they’re up against England, losing this one 68-28
• In an upset (again, I’ll get over it) the beautiful blue and white of Italy was beaten by the solid green of South Africa 57-38
• Finally in a realistic scoring match-up, the All Blacks beat Fiji 82-14

(scores are votes not %)

The Chiefs and South Africa are now the two lowest seeded teams (7 and 8 respectively) to make it through. The biggest clash may be between England’s pure white and France’s retro blue sans advertisements. In Super Rugby the green of the Highlanders clashes (literally) with the red of the Crusaders in a southern derby.

The Stormers lovely blue and white stripes face off against the Germanic colours of the Chiefs. South Africa faces its biggest challenge in the black jersey, will AIG be the downfall of the All Blacks? That’s up to you.