New Shirts and Sponsors for Pools

By Albatross
July 12 2004

Hartlepool United have finally launched their new Nike Shirts, with a new sponsor on display as well. It's something of a return to tradition with a more conventional striped design for the home shirt - and should prove popular.

First of all though, the sponsors. For all the speculation that KFC and others would be involved, the sponsors are Dove Energy - another Oil company, with interests in Yemen, where they have links with DNO. Berge Larsen - the Norwegian tycoon behind IOR, DNO and various other companies in the Oil and Gas sector - also has interests in Dove. Once again therefore the question arises - is this a way of the group of companies that IOR is part of investing in the club, or were other sponsors simply not sufficiently interested?

To the kits themselves. The Home shirt has three relatively broad blue stripes on the front, and in fact is reminiscent of some of our other shirts over the past few years - no bad thing, and it does look quite good if hardly a great leap forward.

The away shirt is a sort of dark blue-y grey colour with white piping, and to my eyes looks rather good - or is that just the woman modelling it on Pools World! Again, while not exactly a radical new departure, it's looks are also not going to put people off buying it.

While Neale Cooper's comments about Pools Fans being the best dressed in the league conjured up images of the team taking to the pitch in something akin to an Armani Suit, the new shirts certainly look fine as far as I'm concerned. In fact they've got a lot going for them. Cutting Edge designs often date very badly, and can divide the fans - or even unite them in disapproval. I can't help wondering if one reason we changed our home shirt last year was because the "Tesco Bag" design with the white section at the top didn't sell well - certainly I decided to pass on it and get the away shirt instead. This time around there's nothing to put me off.

When all's said and done though, it's what the players wearing the shirt do on the pitch that matters - and with the Pools Squad getting ready to head to Holland, the speculation regarding new signings continues. Rhys Day from Mansfield is the latest to be linked - no doubt over the next couple of weeks there will be plenty of others. For the moment though, any Poolies heading across the North Sea will have the chance to see new signing Jack Ross in action - will he be the answer on the right side?