Fabled Shirt Replicated for Welsh Club

“There are thought to be only eight rugby jerseys still in existence from the fabled 1905 New Zealand world tour,” Alex Smith writes for the Carmarthen Journal. “Carmarthenshire’s Tycroes RFC [in Wales] owned one of them – so when the rugby club was forced to let go of this rarest of artifacts because of financial pressures, members could have never have dreamt what would turn up on its doorstep just months later. Massey University has given the club a replica of the shirt made with the same material and at the same mill in New Zealand where the original was crafted in 1905. “I have fallen in love with this jersey a bit since making it,” said Massey University fashion lecturer Robertina Downs, who helped make the shirt and travelled 12,000 miles to Carmarthenshire to present it. “Even an expert looking at it would have a hard time telling the difference between it and the real thing.”