It appears that Aston Villa’s controversial football shirt is more suited to aquatic sports than the beautiful game
Simon Briggs tests Aston Villa’s Castore football shirt to its limits Credit: Simon Briggs
“DELIVERED! Enjoy your new merch.” said the cheery email from Aston Villa’s online shop. But would I enjoy the notorious wet-look shirt? The one that becomes instantly saturated during exercise? This is the shirt, it is whispered, that would make even Prince Andrew perspire.
Retailing at £115 (or £130 with a player’s name) the latest version of the claret-and-blue kit reflects poorly on both manufacturers Castore and Villa themselves. It finished next to bottom in Telegraph Sport’s round-up of the season’s best kits. And that was before we’d heard about its side-effects.
My test kit arrived in the post yesterday. As I was separating it from the packaging, the fabric felt almost identical to the surrounding plastic. Clearly, no animals nor plants had been harmed during the making of this shirt. There was about as much natural fibre here as you might find in a Pot Noodle.
Torn between sizes, I had eventually ordered the small. The idea was to replicate the figure-hugging effect reported by Villa’s players. For the women’s teams, the discomfort has extended beyond the physical. “No woman that I know wants to get hot and sweaty and have their sports gear cling to them in all places,” said the BBC commentator Jacqui Oatley last week.
‘It feels like your lugging around an extra couple of kilos’ 💧
Amid claims that Aston Villa’s ‘wet-look’ shirts are weighing players down, our own @simonrbriggs put it to the test…#TelegraphSport
— Telegraph Sport (@TelegraphSport) October 3, 2023
In the absence of a last-minute call-up to training at Bodymoor Heath, I took myself and my shiny second skin down to the gym. Half-an-hour on a Wattbike should sort the cotton from the polyester. And indeed I was only five minutes in before an uncomfortable prickling broke out on my back. Either someone was walking on my grave, or the shirt was already sticking like cling film.
I should point out that I am a drippy character at the best of times. No-one would entrust me with a reverse-swinging cricket ball, for fear of the dry side being tainted. But even I wasn’t prepared for the sweatnami that erupted from my pores.
Nor for the process of clearing up the mess afterwards. I was spraying water like a firehose, creating a sizeable puddle at the foot of the machine. Having climbed off the bike, I went to work with paper towel and a hygienic spray – plus a little help from an understanding David Lloyd Leisure employee. But a mop and bucket would have been handy.
The Wattbike was left rather moist Credit: Simon Briggs
Despite now looking like the “Before” section of a deodorant advert, I remained at the scene of the crime for another few minutes. I was discussing Castore with my new friend: the gym supervisor, who had generously forgiven me for flooding his floor.
We agreed that Castore’s tennis kit, pioneered by Andy Murray four years ago, is excellent. But perhaps the firm’s rapid expansion – which includes contracts with the England cricket team, as well as Rangers and Newcastle United, among other footballing clients – has left them overextended? The new Villa shirt was made in China, where last season’s had come from Turkey.
Andy Murray has had no problems with Castore’s tennis kit Credit: Getty Imaged
We weren’t chatting for long, though, before my teeth started chattering. It was as if I had climbed straight out of the adjacent swimming pool into the gym’s ferocious air-conditioning. So I took myself off to the shower and packed up my stuff. Next time… well, with any luck, there won’t be a next time. But if there were, I would make a mental note to bring a second bag. As I shoved the sodden shirt in with the rest of my kit, I might as well have poured my water bottle in there too.
I still had to repeat a similar process this morning. My boss insisted that natural light would facilitate the snapping of humiliating pics. This time, as I performed shuttle runs at the local park, I did at least have some breeze in my face. But after 20 minutes or so, the result was the same: half human, half otter, only considerably less cute.
News reports suggest that Aston Villa are already in discussions about terminating their equipment contract. I can understand why. Judging by my experiment, this shirt is only fit for one sport, and that’s water polo.
