2026 Kit Bag

**Kiki Balboa** · 18/11/2025, 10:34 AM

Lovely Crest from Waterford.

Shame its a circle badge, kind of ruins it for me.

**culloty82** · 18/11/2025, 10:34 AM

New Waterford crest:

**2 Year Contract** · 18/11/2025, 10:44 AM

Pretty nice, a big improvement on the last one with it’s writing just left loose outside the actual badge

**EatYerGreens** · 18/11/2025, 1:28 PM

That's a nice crest. Simple, clean, unique and links to the identity of the town. Definitely an 8.5 of 9 out of 10 from me

**EatYerGreens** · 18/11/2025, 1:42 PM

Originally Posted by nigel-harps1954

The amount it's worth the club in gift of kit is far greater than what they'll sell, realistically. Especially when you have as many teams as LOI clubs are putting out now.

I think that's very flawed, on 2 grounds.

Firstly - are the likes of Adidas and Umbro the only people who gift kit to a club's teams ? Or do they not all do it? If it's the latter, then this provides no genuine advantage in using the big multinationals.

Secondly - this also works on the presumption that relatively few shirts will be sold. Which Bohs as an extreme example have shown doesn't have to be the case at all. Global shirt sales are a serious business now - with people buying shirts from clubs they know little or nothing about just because they like how they look. I have a load of jersies that I've bought over the years from random teams just because they were cool or quirky. There's a Welsh second-tier club who get less than 200 people at their average game who have made novelty shirts a real thing in recent years, selling way more than they otherwise would as a result. They also did a Boca Juniors-esque shirt 2 years ago (they have a similar kit normally) which sold a load in Argentina. Not bad flor a club who don't even have their own website, nevermind an online store ! They're LLantwit Major btw (see their current shirts here = Match Shirts )

You then also have a number of 'mystery shirt' companies who are always on the look out for interesting shirts they can buy a job lot of. A very basic club I used to play with in England got approx 300 of its shirts bought for one of these boxes one year and sold more that way than it probably has either before or since combined.

No Irish club apart from Bohs has even come cloe to understanding how much potential there is in football shirts these days. It's become a huge global business. And often the more unusal or obscure the club/shirt is, the better its appeal to collectors/buyers.

**nigel-harps1954** · 18/11/2025, 9:01 PM

Originally Posted by EatYerGreens

I think that's very flawed, on 2 grounds.

Firstly - are the likes of Adidas and Umbro the only people who gift kit to a club's teams ? Or do they not all do it? If it's the latter, then this provides no genuine advantage in using the big multinationals.

Secondly - this also works on the presumption that relatively few shirts will be sold. Which Bohs as an extreme example have shown doesn't have to be the case at all. Global shirt sales are a serious business now - with people buying shirts from clubs they know little or nothing about just because they like how they look. I have a load of jersies that I've bought over the years from random teams just because they were cool or quirky. There's a Welsh second-tier club who get less than 200 people at their average game who have made novelty shirts a real thing in recent years, selling way more than they otherwise would as a result. They also did a Boca Juniors-esque shirt 2 years ago (they have a similar kit normally) which sold a load in Argentina. Not bad flor a club who don't even have their own website, nevermind an online store ! They're LLantwit Major btw (see their current shirts here = Match Shirts )

You then also have a number of 'mystery shirt' companies who are always on the look out for interesting shirts they can buy a job lot of. A very basic club I used to play with in England got approx 300 of its shirts bought for one of these boxes one year and sold more that way than it probably has either before or since combined.

No Irish club apart from Bohs has even come cloe to understanding how much potential there is in football shirts these days. It's become a huge global business. And often the more unusal or obscure the club/shirt is, the better its appeal to collectors/buyers.

I'm not sure you're understanding the term 'gift of kit' here.

Instead of an Irish club brokering a deal worth €X per year to the club, they generally get €X amount of gear from the suppliers. Hence 'gift of kit'.

It costs enormous amounts of money to kit out all the various underage mens, womens, and senior sides for all the LOI clubs each season. If you take an average of 25 players per squad, at a club like Finn Harps, before you even get to academy teams that aren't in the national league structures, you've got 14's, 15's, 17's, 20's and senior mens, and 17's and senior/20's womens, plus 4 or 5 coaching staff at each group. Over 200 people to kit out with training gear, kit bags, jerseys, match day tracksuits, etc. Any deal worth €20-30k per year in kit can't be sniffed at.

So, in short, you go with the supplier who can offer you the most gift of kit per year.

**EatYerGreens** · 19/11/2025, 12:56 AM

Originally Posted by nigel-harps1954

I'm not sure you're understanding the term 'gift of kit' here.

Instead of an Irish club brokering a deal worth €X per year to the club, they generally get €X amount of gear from the suppliers. Hence 'gift of kit'.

It costs enormous amounts of money to kit out all the various underage mens, womens, and senior sides for all the LOI clubs each season. If you take an average of 25 players per squad, at a club like Finn Harps, before you even get to academy teams that aren't in the national league structures, you've got 14's, 15's, 17's, 20's and senior mens, and 17's and senior/20's womens, plus 4 or 5 coaching staff at each group. Over 200 people to kit out with training gear, kit bags, jerseys, match day tracksuits, etc. Any deal worth €20-30k per year in kit can't be sniffed at.

So, in short, you go with the supplier who can offer you the most gift of kit per year.

Where is the evidence that the big multinational suppliers offer a lot more 'gift of kit' to Irish clubs than smaller international or Irish brands do though ? Surely the fact that so many clubs have gone with O'Neills would suggest otherwise? And if it's all aboiut blagging freebies - then why have Cork gone with their own brand instead?

There is also an obvious ceiling to how much gifted kit clubs actually need anyway. They only have so many teams to kit out.

Imagine if Bohs had sat down a few years ago and said to themselves " Screw O'Neills lads - BigBalls PLC is offering us €5,000 more in free stuff if we do the kit deal with them!". At least it would have saved the world from the sight of so many different Bohs shirts anyway (and reduced their revenue by about €2m)

#PennyWisePoundFoolish