…as expected, ‘lovely design tainted by a hideous sponsor patch’.

The ethics of having Cash Converters as a sponsor has been debated to death, so we won’t retread old ground here, instead let’s focusing on the aesthetic impact of their logo on the new away shirt.

Having Cash Converters’ logo in a black patch wasn’t strictly necessary on the home shirt, white text against black and amber stripes is easily readable, it was distinctive enough when Karoo’s wordmark was on the 2008/2009 shirt, ditto Totesport’s URL last season. Having the same patch on the away shirt is just wanton ruination of a lovely shirt, it completely dominates* all other detail on such a subtle coloured garment. The text alone in black would have looked infinitely better, the only reason you’d use the black patch is to save money by using the same ones as used on the home shirt.

Compare the sponsor on our away shirt to that on West Brom’s, which uses the same adidas template. Even with superfluous Chinese characters their sponsor’s logo looks better for not using a patch. The shirt itself is lovely, a simple affair with alternating matte/shiny hoops, and light blue has some historical connection to Hull City as we wore it immediately post WW2 when the Board of Trade deemed amber (or orange as Harold Needler wanted) dye too expensive as the country adapted to peacetime.

Perhaps the only benefit of the patch is it allows the sponsor to be blacked out with gaffer tape better should you wish to show you’re a Cash Converters concientious objector, or maybe it’ll peel off after a few washes. White shorts and light blue socks complete the kit, which could have been an absolute classic without the blight of the black patch.

Oh and the less said about the way we revealed the shirt the better. Swansea invited fans into the stadium to see the full team line up in their new adidas away kit, we ask fans to hunt round the city centre to search for something they’ve never seen before and post hastily taken photos on Facebook. Marketing fail.

*It’s worth noting that the sponsor patch on the Cameron Stewart modelled shirt looks considerably smaller than the one being shown in the City Centre. Cameron’s looks to have been digitally added onto a plain shirt. Can we have the plain one please?