Douglas Adams, in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, describes a sleek black stuntship:
"'It's so ... black!' said Ford Prefect, 'you can hardly make out its shape ... light just seems to fall into it!' Zaphod said nothing. He had simply fallen in love. The blackness of it was so extreme that it was almost impossible to tell how close you were standing to it."
The illustrious Springboks may boast the most tank-like forwards, the English (in their lilly white!) a gargantuan pack of solid iron, the French famously unpredictable elan and flair nice sentence he's got going here backed up by uncompromising muscle, but only the New Zealanders take the field in All Black.
There are no go-faster stripes; no interwoven crests, no braid, no sponsorship logos, no player names emblazoned across its shoulder (every new All Black is told "this is not your shirt; you are just the current custodian"). It is just black, pure black, interrupted only by the manafacturer's logo and the silver fern which emblemises new Zealand Rugby.
Credit to Adidas, then, who only picked up the All Blacks contract in the last decade, and had the sense not to jazz up the All Blacks jersey, but to further simplify it (removing the white collar and the (small) brewer's logo). Credit to the NZRFU for appreciating the value of the mystique, and refusing to sell an actual match specimen to anyone: this is a very similar shirt, make no mistake, but it's not an exact rendition of the model worn on the field by the New Zealand All Blacks.
If you want one of those, there's only one way to get it.
And that's how it should be.
O. Buxton: Reviews p2.
There are no go-faster stripes; no interwoven crests, no braid, no sponsorship logos, no player names emblazoned across its shoulder (every new All Black is told "this is not your shirt; you are just the current custodian"). It is just black, pure black, interrupted only by the manafacturer's logo and the silver fern which emblemises new Zealand Rugby.
Credit to Adidas, then, who only picked up the All Blacks contract in the last decade, and had the sense not to jazz up the All Blacks jersey, but to further simplify it (removing the white collar and the (small) brewer's logo). Credit to the NZRFU for appreciating the value of the mystique, and refusing to sell an actual match specimen to anyone: this is a very similar shirt, make no mistake, but it's not an exact rendition of the model worn on the field by the New Zealand All Blacks.
If you want one of those, there's only one way to get it.
And that's how it should be.
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O. Buxton: Reviews p2.
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