Ooooof.
O'Neills have gone back to the future for a lot of their gear this season. Firstly, we had a couple of rebellion-themed kits, embossed on the back with a facsimile of the proclamation . It was advertised with the fundamentally hilarious blurb of "a terrible beauty is born".
That blurb, of course, is an excerpt from the Yeats poem Easter 1916, which marked a violent and bloody rebellion as a wildly disorientating first step in the birth of a new state.
We are not sure whether Yeats had envisaged his words being used to sell a jersey that would populate the beaches of J1 destinations in 2016, but Yeats knew more than most the violent and varying vicissitudes of time. Perhaps the apocalyptic foreboding of his poems of this time were in reference to lads on beaches with bags of cans and a cotton proclamation on their back:
The @ONeills1918 Dublin 1916 Commemoration Jersey, now available here: https://t.co/Rx6hdJTva0 #ChoiceofChampions pic.twitter.com/qK50BZrArE
— O'Neills (@ONeills1918) February 22, 2016
While these kits may have divided opinion, we are sure their latest range are going to be met with universal approval. Ahead of the European Championships, O'Neills have released a range of retro Irish gear, and they are absolutely bloody lovely:
We are also firm supporters of a free number on the back. Possibly the greatest O'Neills release ahead of a football tournament since this:
You can get your claws on the retro range here.
