Lost the Thread

Introducing the new England rugby kit, proudly sporting the national colours of, er........

Cranberry? Merlot? Blackberry Crumble?

The hopeless incompetents at the RFU, keeping up a long history of idiocy and greed stretching back to the beginning of the professional era in the 1990s, have evidently decided that England don't need to wear white shirts. This is what happens when you pay a marketing director a couple of hundred grand a year and waste a million or two on PR consultants and stylists - you have to listen to their right-on, rootless, ahistorical bleatings. And you end up with the plastic rubbish bags being worn above. And before they start defending themselves by calling it an 'away' kit, England were playing at home today. And before they start gibbering about the similarity of the England white shirt to the Wallabies' gold, remind them that this has been ignored for a century, including a world cup final.

It is true the All Blacks occasionally have to wear a white change kit, but I bet the players know they are not wearing all black (imagine the horror if that was the one only cap you won!). It's the reason they are not known as 'New Zealand', for heaven's sake! The Aussies drone on about the 'Green and Gold' as much as their cricketing counterparts mention the 'Baggy Green', but this is the right sort of pride.

So why can't England stick to their roots and show some pride and loyalty to their traditional national colours? They lost the plot, as well as the game.

(As written by Idle, born and bred in Aberdeenshire, long-suffering Scotland supporter)