Saturday, September 08, 2007

Irish Jersey

This is not something I never thought I'd ever hear myself say but... I agree with Ross O'Carroll Kelly. I rarely buy the Irish Times but today I saw the tag line "Ross O'Carroll Kelly gets shirty" on the front page and I knew what was coming. Ross has been let loose on the new Irish rugby jersey. His latest adventure sees him almost being refused from Kielys pub in Donnybrook and told to go to Longs next door for trying to get into the infamous rugby/poser pub while wearing a soccer jersey. After some confusion the bouncer realises that Kelly is wearing the new Irish jersey and a plot is hatched to restore the collar to the jersey.

I can see where he is coming from. The new jersey is a darker shade of green going towards the color of the Irish soccer jersey and, more importantly, has lost its collar in favour of some new stubby collar. The material is lighter and tighter, more like normal sports clothing and there are weird shiny patches on the front, sides and shoulders which I can only conclude are meant to be slippy. Someone has obviously concluded that if they took away the collar, made the jersey skin tight and coated the Irish team in Teflon then the All Blacks would just slide off and we'd win the world cup.

Also just in case slippy pads were not enough The Guardian (which I normally read) has an article informing me that the Irish team is getting a 2.7% boost in performance from their new jersey. You see it's one of the new IonX jerseys which uses negative ions to promote blood flow and the supply of oxygen to the muscles thereby boosting performance.

I agree with Ross, God forgive me. The new jersey is a soccer jersey and worse still it's not for the average man or woman on the street. I've never had the body of an athlete and these days I hear actual athletes my age wondering if they will get another year or two at the top level so I guess I never will get a toned body and a six pack, at least not one that doesn't come in a cardboard holder. Therefore a skin tight, All Black repellent, ion generating, jersey was never a runner for me. Fortunately the powers that be have recognised this fact and released a "Classic" jersey which I now own. It's still a little bit tighter than my old one and the color needs a couple of washes but at least it's just a collar short of a rugby jersey.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I picked up a "classic" as well. None of that tight fitting stuff thank you very much.