What's green, gold and ghastly? The Aussie home shirt
* Rebekah Devlin
* From: News Limited newspapers
* June 07, 2010
OK, let's just pull the bandaid off quickly. The green and gold Aussie shirt is a stinker. There, I said it.
It looks like something you would have worn at your primary school sports day, well, except I was always in the red team.
It has all the design sensibilities of a beach ball and the eco-friendly nature is hardly going to get Penny Wong too excited.
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The jersey and shorts are made from recycled plastic bottles - but it only takes eight bottles to make every jersey.
Nike reckons it will use 13 million bottles to make jerseys for fans worldwide, but I wonder whether that will even make a dent in all the extra bottles of Coke that Aussie fans will consume trying to stay awake for the Socceroos' tilt at the cup.
Now before you go labelling me unAustralian and all that, let me tell you I've still got a 2006 Aussie World Cup jersey hanging in my wardrobe, and it's a winner.
However, it also proves that when you're working with yellow and green - a dubious colour combination at the best of times - simplicity is always the best option.
The Wallabies have got it right, with a design of predominantly yellow with green highlights. The South Africans have followed the same rule by keeping the design to a minimum, as has Brazil.
So how did we get it so horribly wrong?
We have many talented designers at our disposal in Australia, so why weren't a few of them consulted before we got thousands of the jerseys made?
At least the dark blue away strip is slightly less infantile, but that yellow strip is still bleugh. I know the `80s are back in style, but some fashions are best left back there.
I'm not silly enough to think that the design of our strip will impact the way we play, but no one likes to be the kid in the schoolyard who gets picked on for their daggy fashions.
Thankfully though, we won't be the only ones being beaten up at recess.
A quick trip to my local sporting store and I'm greeted with the over-priced, brightly-coloured strips the 32 nations will be wearing at the cup. However, the hilarious sales assistant has clearly had a bit of time on his hands to assess the various jerseys.
"The boss wanted me to buy an Aussie one, but there's no way I was gonna do that, it's really bad," he says, wearing an English jersey.
The English away strip is a Field of Dreams "if you build it, the cup will come" number. It seems they've flashed back to the year 1966 (when they hosted and won the World Cup).
Bizarrely it is made from three different materials, including cotton on the front.
Initial reviews (from punters sitting on a computer not those on the field) are that it feels pretty weird when you first put it on, but loosens up after a wash or two ... which begs the question, do the stewards wash these before the guys play in them or are they fresh out of the plastic?
Italy has included a nice touch on their home jerseys with green, white and red trim around the collar.
"It looks good except for Darth Vader on the front," the sales assistant says with a laugh.
He's right. The jersey is meant to make the physique look a bit more buffed, giving an outline to the abs and pecs, and with a spine running down the back - but they've managed to channel the iconic Stars Wars villain.
Imagine, as a Paraguay forward lines up to take a penalty ... "Gianluigi, breathe, I, breathe, am your father...."
The Netherlands away strip is a goodie - the blue and red arrows are not only very striking but they're slimming too, because they run down the body. Although I doubt their finely tuned athletes really need the slimming trick of the eye.
Thank goodness an away strip gives them a chance to escape the orange (and we thought yellow and green were hard to work with) - the home strip could well be worn by our council workers if there's surplus stock.
Japan's home strip has some weird blue feathering going on and some even weirder yellow Morse code dashes and dots around the arm. And both the home and away jerseys have a bizarre red bib under the neck, just in case they do the wrong kind of dribbling.
Argentina has stuck with the traditional pale blue and white, though the white is actually mesh which allows the skin to breathe. However, I am a little concerned the see-through material might give us a Lady Di moment and show a little too much skin.
Brazil has done well with its yellow and green home jersey, but the blue away strip with yellow polka dots is rather unusual for a bunch of blokes. Perhaps they had some material left over from Carnival?
And so, yes, our jersey is bad, but incredibly, we're not alone.
And let's face it, the outfits (and skin on show) of the world's WAGs will soon overtake our fashion faux pas.
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/sport/world-cup-2010/whats-green-gold-and-ghastly-the-aussie-home-shirt/story-fn5ephkw-1225876614084