In love with the jersey: people with designs on sports shirts

They’re one of the most common fashion items around, but, while most clothing designers who sell products in their hundreds of thousands become famous, jersey designers remain largely anonymous, working away in the background

For 15 years, one person’s fingerprints have been all over most of the GAA jerseys. Alison Underwood is the head of jersey design at O’Neills, the brand synonymous with GAA style.

Throughout the year, Underwood and her team come up with design ideas. It’s a unique brief, as making a GAA jersey is about working within restrictions. “If we’re putting strong designs on, the sponsor name must be clear, the crest must be clear. It’s quite easy to come out with mad designs, but it has to work.”

Underwood and her fellow designers look to other rugby, soccer and cycling designers for inspiration. But GAA jerseys are unique: “You’d know a Gaelic jersey against any other jersey. It has its own style, look and feel.”

High-tech rugby shirts

Martin Johnston is the public relations and communications manager at Canterbury, which is designing the new Ireland rugby jersey. “We’ve just started working with Ireland again, and this is the third season in a row with England. With England we sit down with them, and with individual players. Rugby is a game that’s very different for each player, so the requirements of a jersey need to fit around various body types. We talk to different types of players so that every angle is covered. That’s the first step: sit around the table with a current jersey and ask what they don’t like and what they need.”

With rugby jerseys, rudimentary design has given way to high-tech material and features. "We look at the way they fit the body, not just from a setting point of view, but, if you look at the new Leinster jersey we've brought out, and the new Ireland jersey we're launching, those seams come around the back, not to the side. They pull the jersey in, so they give you another 1 per cent, which may just make a finger miss a grab so you might score a try.

“We look how we can build in a technical aspect to allow the player to have movement, but also an advantage.”

His favourite shirt? “The classic All Blacks jersey. It’s such an iconic jersey, just the black shirt, white collar, and silver fern. You don’t get more simple than that.”

The traditional and the new

New kits are always met with reaction from supporters, which Underwood’s team must take into account alongside their work with the county boards. “Fans’ tastes differ from county to county. The northern clubs have different tastes to clubs in the South.

“Some counties in some areas of the country would be a lot more traditional; they don’t like change, they like their jersey staying the same, and that goes through to the supporters. Kilkenny haven’t changed their jersey; we’ve brought in tweaks, but it’s still the traditional amber and black stripes. Dublin supporters are quite traditional. They do like change in a way, but they remember the old days and the older jerseys.

“We’ve modernised collars, which Monaghan have latched on to, but generally, counties in the midlands don’t like that kind of change.”

For her favourite jerseys to work on, it’s back to the capital. “The Dublin one we always enjoy, because it’s always quite a challenge – a good challenge. I always like working on Kildare, because I’m a Lilywhite myself. With the goalkeepers jersey or away jersey, we can have a lot more fun.”

Speaking about a jersey’s essence, she says, “They’re something that give a sense of pride. It gives you that sense of following your club or your county.”

Denis Hurley runs Prideinthe jersey.com. A jersey nerd? "I suppose that would be the appropriate term." He cites the Limerick 2010-2012 jersey as a great example: "Simple, green, just the logo and the sponsor. I'd be very much of the less-is-more approach," he says. "I don't like ones that are too busy in terms of squiggles and stripes."

His favourite is Cork’s jersey from 1990. “I’m probably biased, because I’m from Cork, and you link the jersey with a period of success. I think a lot of people link their favourite jerseys to a time of the team’s success.”

For Underwood, “It’s a brilliant job. I can’t go on holidays without seeing them. It’s amazing to see something you’ve worked on in so many places and on so many people.”