New England kit - move along, nothing to see here

So, despite the trepidation and gnashing of teeth at the announcement in May this year that the RFU had signed a kit deal with Umbro, today’s reveal of the new England kit is somewhat unremarkable.

The kit is, well, fine. That’s all. I preferred the Canterbury designs, admittedly, but there’s nothing particularly objectionable about the design produced by Umbro.

What I do like is the lack of the usual marketing bullshit surrounding the kit launch, no mention of “white noise” or “state of the art technology” or “unbreakable bond” or some other made-up nonsense. It’s just a white kit, with a bit of red trim, made by Umbro.

So it does look a bit like a football shirt – you could easily just substitute the red rose for three lions – and there does remain a certain tackiness associated with the Umbro logo (although at £70 for an adult replica shirt, it’s hardly cheap) – but, snobbery aside, it really doesn’t look too bad.

And in any event there’s really little point in getting too wound up about it as, no doubt, there’ll be another one launched in 12 months so…

Total Flanker – the older I get, the better I was