2015 · Home

Find out this jersey, began as a mystery and ended as a lesson in reading. The first photos showed green and white hoops, a foundry for a sponsor and an unreadable crest; the next set revealed everything: South Leicester RFC, with the dragon over a rugby ball and the initials S and L on the badge, dressed by Webb Ellis, the brand named after the boy who picked up the ball in 1823 and invented rugby, whose fleeing blue figure signs the chest and the nape. The sponsors are a portrait of industrial East Midlands England: on the front Cookes Patterns & Castings, a patterns and foundry house, on the back Hardings, above a second row's number 4, the number of those who do the dark work of the set piece. This is the shirt of the years when South climbed into the national leagues, the highest point in their history, worn at the other Welford Road, the one in Wigston, where the Tuilagis learned to knock people over. Every collection needs one piece with mauls and scrums on its CV. This one has arrived.

Here at Hoopster, East Midlands rugby arrives: the Welford Road that never makes headlines, but taught the Tuilagis how to bring men down.