Craven Cottage Newsround

Heidar and Lil Wayne in last year’s Airness Fulham kit.

But do you remember the history of this kit?

Partnership, everyone happy

Announcement of new shirt design

Kit delayed

Samples arrive, Fulham reject

Club offers a refund to all pre-orderers

It arrives!

Why am I bringing all this up? Well, I’ve finally got hold of one of the original Airness home shirts, the shirts that were never on sale to the public. The only shirts available in the club shop were made to meet the Airness design but were made by an unnamed third party. For whatever reason I never did get one, despite wanting to. I didn’t like the way they were made, the way they felt. Which might sound daft but I’m a big fan of football shirts and I like to get quality. These replacement shirts did not feel like quality.

The club had taken over because the Airness shipments had not arrived at the start of the season. This was embarrassing for everyone and cost the club serious money. Then, when the shirts did turn up, the club rejected them. Quality control was cited.

This struck me as odd. I’ve been to France a few times and Airness are thriving as a manufacturer over there. They provide shirts for Auxerre and Lille, as well as several other teams that I’m not as well acquainted with. I have the Lille shirt and would have bought the Auxerre if I had been able to find the right size (larger versions sold out quickly).

And that was the problem. Airness shirts are very tight fitting. They’re made with an unusual elasticy fabric, very much designed with an athletic physique in mind (read: if you have a protruding belly this shirt will not exactly de-emphasise it). But they are well made. Very well made. So, why did Fulham reject the shipment when the same shirt design was deemed perfectly acceptable to French clubs and their fans?

As I mentioned at the start of the article, I now have an original Fulham Airness shirt, and yes, it’s absolutely fine. I’d go as far as to say that I really like it. Yes it’s a tight fit, but it is identical to the Lille shirts I have seen. Here’s the rub though: I have a 3XL in Lille and 4XL in Fulham, not because I am gigantic (I am tall but quite gangly) but because this is the way the shirts are sized. Could it be that the powers that be at Fulham just decided that this would confuse fans too much? Was the tighter fit deemed unacceptably unflattering to the British figure? Or was the rejection a punitive measure? Were Fulham hacked off at not having their shirts in the club shop for the lucrative early season period?

We’ll never know, but I wanted to stand up for Airness here. Their shirts are a bit different, but that doesn’t and shouldn’t be seen as a negative thing. I love the stretchy fabric, the unusual design, and - bizarrely - much prefer this shirt to the current, more classical version.

Thanks to everyone who ran the predictor. I’ve included the 19 Fulham fans who gave me points and positions in their predictions. This gave me:

And here are the average points per team:

Biased? Of course we are. But like I said the other day, clearly there is hope.

We’ve been nominated for Best Premier League blog!

I think Chopper brought this whole scheme to the world’s attention, so thanks for that, Dave.   In such situations it would be easy to play it cool, to pretend such things are of no importance, etc, etc.   But sod it, I’m very excited about this.

So please do Go here and vote for Craven Cottage Newsround!  It takes about two seconds and would make us extremely happy.

Thanks!