In the first few seasons of play in the Australian Hyundai A-League, the competitions’ clubs were scrambling to secure a firm identity for themselves in a country where other sports and priorities dominated. With an exclusive contract between the league and kit makers Reebok and quite a few of the entrants in the league being newly founded, the second half of the 00’s was an age of experimentation, for better or worse. Join us today as we look back at one shirt that perfectly encapsulates those pioneering years Down Under – the 2007/2008 home shirt of the side formerly known as Queensland Roar;

Before we kick off with this week’s shirt, be mindful of our previous articles on shirts from Australia, including a ranking of the shirts currently on show in the A-League. Do have a quick peek;

With that out of the way, a quick note about the Roar; founded by Dutch immigrants as Hollandia FC, changing its name in the 70’s to the less ethnic Brisbane (later Queensland) Lions FC (this in keeping with new rules designed to rid football of its reputation as a pastime for migrants), the club unveiled Queensland Roar as new name on March 2nd 2005 in preparation for their debut in the newly-launched A-League.

Ahead of 2009/2010, fellow Queensland-based teams Gold Coast United and North Queensland Fury were added to the league as expansion clubs. As a result, the decision was made for Queensland Roar to drop its more regional name (having been the sole representative of the state of Queensland in the A-League up to that point) and adopt Brisbane Roar as a nomer. Both Gold Coast and North Queensland quickly crashed and burned in 2012 and 2011 respectively, but Roar has continued to bear the name of its home city rather than that of its home state.

In short, the kit we are featuring today was worn by Queensland Roar, which is now known as Brisbane Roar. For the purpose of clarity, we will refer to the team as Roar in the rest of this article.

Orange and maroon with white is a very, very unusual combination, with Roar being the only football club we know of to have ever worn this peculiar triumvirate. Whether this was by choice or by force remains a matter of interpretation, as in the early days of the A-League all clubs had three different colours on their shirt – no more, no less (with Melbourne Victory being the least happy with this; they only needed navy and white but were saddled with grey as well!).

This strict enforcement of three colours was in line with the centralized marketing and branding of the league; everyone was forced to wear Reebok shirts, and the few available templates (just two in earlier years, a handful more in later seasons) all came with panels that could be done up in three contrasting colours. As such, teams had little choice – which was further exacerbated by the fact that shirts were kept for two seasons at a time. In other words, if you ordered a poorly thought out strip, you were stuck with it for two years.

Roar’s board of directors seemingly settled on orange, blue, and maroon as their three main colours (from most to least important on shirts), a factoid we can glean from the club’s inaugural home shirt (worn in 2005/2006 and 2006/2007, based on the same template as our Newcastle Jets shirt). Orange shirts with maroon and blue trim coupled with blue shorts – it just smacks of that ‘early A-League charm’ as we like to call it.

However, when the time came for Roar to switch out its home shirt for the very first time, blue was completely absent on the new top. Indeed, this accent colour – featured prominently in the crest as well – had proved either so unpopular or so incongruent with the orange and maroon that it was silently but decisively dropped at the first moment of opportunity – the 2007/2008 pre-season.

Reebok still enforced templates based on the use of three different colours though, so fans at the Suncorp Stadium were treated to a design that amped up the maroon in lieu of blue – this deep, deep shade of red now also dominating the shorts. White was promoted to tertiary colour, in keeping with the club crest. The result is, well, certainly unique!

Nevertheless, do not make the mistake of thinking that the directors got drunk in the boardroom one night and played Russian roulette with a paintball gun to decide on the team’s colours; orange and blue were carried by Hollandia and Lions (no surprise when you consider what the Dutch national colours are) while maroon is the colour of choice for sports teams representing the state of Queensland (the representative rugby league team is even nicknamed the ‘Maroons’).

The crest exudes that odd A-League charm we spoke of earlier, with all the questionable stylistic choices and mixture of colours that come with the territory – complete with a football standing in for the ‘O’ in Roar. It sits nicely embroidered on the left chest, and would prove to be one of the last holdouts of the identity the Roar kicked off its tenure in the A-League with back in 2005.

After all, the blue was dropped in 2007. The ‘Queensland’ in Queensland Roar was dropped in 2009. Maroon was dropped in 2011 (Puma came in as supplier following the end of the Reebok contract and proceeded to shower the club with uninspired teamwear in orange and black). It was no surprise, then, that the proud if slightly flamboyant lion’s head was dropped as well; in 2014, the club announced its retirement in favour of a very toothless (pun not entirely intended) and bland design.

As such, all that the current Roar have in common with the side that played in the first ever A-League weekend in August 2005 (beating the now-defunct New Zealand Knights 2 to 0 at the Suncorp), is the colour orange and the name Roar. Not that we want to engage in fear-mongering, but it makes you wonder whether either of those two elements will one day be consigned to the dustbin.

As it stands though, the Roar are a clear argument against the design philosophies of the mid 00’s; they proved unpopular and were done away with rather swiftly. Not exactly the legacy the FFA and Reebok were hoping for, we’re sure – with the tenth anniversary of the latter’s contract expiring fast approaching. Many were happy to see the back of them then, and still are now. Although Reebok might not have been involved, the authorities even famously tried to get Perth Glory to change their colours as they were moving the least merchandise out of all clubs.

The league’s ‘sunburst’ logo sits on the left chest, stickered a ways below the white mesh that connects the sleeves to the main body. Consider how the orangeish yellow logo is made up of eight chevrons – one for each of the founding clubs. Reebok’s logomark is embroidered in white, situated just below the collar.

Note that the Reebok logo on the centre of the chest will help you determine whether these shirts – worn for two seasons – are from 2007/2008 or from 2008/2009. If the Reebok logo appears as it does here, it’s from 2007/2008 wheras if the name ‘Reebok’ appears in writing, it’s a 2008/2009 shirt. Quite why this change was made halfway through the shirt’s lifecycle is unclear, but might have something to do with Reebok desiring to gain more exposure – which its slightly obscure logo had a harder time of doing than just writing out the name in full.

The white mesh stretches down quite far, along the abdomen, almost to the bottom hem of the shirt. The Reebok/A-League jock tag, a feature of all shirts of this era, sits stickered in the lower right hand corner. See how the jock tag reflects the Reebok logo on the chest? This was changed for 2008/2009 with the full wordmark appearing on the tags instead. Funnily enough the tag on our shirt still features the RBK that disappeared from the shirts after the 2006/2007 season – perhaps a case of Reebok forgetting to update all facets of their designs.

Retracing our steps back towards the top of the shirt, we fold over the shoulder to reveal the main ‘gimmick’ of the design, if you will. It’s a…. uh…. boomerang-shaped(?) cutout in the mesh, made of the type of polyester used for the body of the shirt. It’s a clever little thing for sure, but its effect is lost when you consider that it droops over the shoulder – effectively rendering half of itself invisible depending on what angle you see it from.

Now here’s the real kicker; Roar weren’t the only team to use this exact template between 2007 and 2009. It wasn’t even shared with just one team, no; four clubs, constituting half of the eight team league, wore this exact design.

Also, we own three of the four shirts shown above (these will be covered in due time – and we still need to find the fourth) – that would make for an excellent comparison article, no? Central Coast Mariners, Queensland Roar, Sydney FC, and new boys Wellington Phoenix all wore this exact template in their respective colours.

We give Nike, Puma, and adidas grief for constantly banging out uninspired templates, but Reebok really takes the ca-…. never mind, adidas acquired Reebok in 2005, so blame the Germans for this one. Worst part is that fans were used to this already as the previous Reebok templates had also been shared between teams between 2005 and 2007. While the above four teams were wearing this, admittedly smart, template from 2007 through 2009, the other four teams in the league were Melbourne Victory, Perth Glory, Newcastle Jets, and Adelaide United. Only Victory and Adelaide had ‘unique’ shirts during these seasons, because Glory and Jets ended up sharing a template.

Let’s bring in our Sydney FC shirt, might as well. Fans of the Sky Blues will remember this top as having been sponsored by Bing Lee.

The above comparison further shows the point Reebok made about using three colours per shirt; clubs were expected to use these boomerangs to bring in their tertiary colours, plus a fourth if they really felt like it. Sydney did as much, bringing orange to the table and topping it off with white, while Roar were happy to just stick to maroon and white (blue had, of course, been dropped).

Additionally, the above comparison shows the tiny amount of customization possible on this template; the Sydney shirt has the ‘inner’ boomerang (coloured orange) done up in with regular polyester, where it is made of mesh on the Roar shirt.

If you, for some reason, have a real love for shirts with maroon sleeves, then you’ll find this is the only Roar kit you will truly love; the maroon, short-lived as it were, only appeared on the sleeves between 2007 and 2009 – it was ‘relegated’ to just the shoulders from 2009 to 2011 before being dropped alongside Reebok. Brisbane Airport appeared as a sticker on the right sleeve, while the league-mandated Hyundai outing appears on the left sleeve.

Now, as we mentioned, these shirts were worn in both the 2007/2008 and 2008/2009 seasons, but ours is specifically the 07/08 spec but seems to have been repurposed for being sold in 08/09. One can tell by virtue of the sponsors, The Coffee Club (300 outlets across Australia, we are told), who only came in to support the club by the time the 2007/2008 season had already kicked off. A rather disruptive black sticker with the chain’s name in white lettering was applied with great haste for that campaign, while good taste prevailed and a more minimalist approach was taken for 2008/2009.

However, where our shirt is from 07/08 (you can tell from the Reebok logo on the chest), it received 08/09-spec sponsor printing. Bit of a headscratcher, Roar must have had some unsold tops left over when they made the decision to update them with The Coffee Club’s branding.

The name and number of youth product Michael Zullo, born and raised in Brisbane and trained up at Brisbane City FC and Brisbane Strikers. This shirt is not matchworn – the tags are still attached and even if they weren’t, this is a very, very generous XL (the same problem last week’s FC Gifu shirt has – we prefer out shirts in M or L) that would be impossible to wear for the 5 ft 6 in (168 cm) tall Zullo.

The font for the number and letters isn’t the best out there – they all look very shaken due to the shadow outline used – but aren’t offensive enough to get worked up over. Club partner Luxury Paints, who are presumed to sell exactly what you think they sell, are stickered on the lower back – inadvertedly adding a dash of that elusive blue to the top.

Run, Michael, run! A number 7 by heart (a squad number which he retained at Sydney FC, his current club), Zullo is known for his adventure in the Netherlands, signing for FC Utrecht alongside compatriots Tommy Oar and Adam Sarota in 2010. The trio stayed in the ‘Domstad’ for five seasons with Zullo recording 34 league appearances and a loan to Adelaide United during that time. Upon the expiry of his contract in Europe, he was signed by Melbourne City, whom he remained with for just one season before joining Sydney.

Other players in the Roar squad that year included Sergio van Dijk, the Dutch-born Indonesian striker who went on to win the Australian Golden Boot in 2011, Scottish midfielder Charlie Miller, and Isaka Cernak, who would turn out for Home United in the Singapore Premier League years later.

The back of the shirt in full view, and we dare say it is a good look; the defining features of the front (the boomerangs and related white mesh) continue here, helping to solidify the shirt’s overall appearance. It’s always good to have a back sponsor to break up the monotony as well, so full marks in this regard (and a bonus for the irony of Roar being unable to fully drop blue as a result of Luxury Paints sponsoring the shirt).

As for results on the pitch, this design had a decent time; Roar made it to but lost the Preliminary Finals against the Jets in its first season of use and did the exact same in its second season (only this time losing against Adelaide). This was a prelude to what would be the most succesful era in the club’s history, as Roar went on to win the league twice and the finals thrice in the next five years. The first of those wins came while maroon still featured on the shirts but under the name of Brisbane Roar, whilst the kits were orange and black by the time the team won their second round of silverware.

So, while Roar fans’ memories of this particular shirt, worn in the early years in the A-League, might not be as rosy as those of later seasons, it remains a nifty little look at the club’s identity at a time where the Roar were still very much developing from awkward beginnings towards being a more robust, marketable, and succesful club.

Now bring out a orange/maroon/blue throwback kit for the 2020/2021 season!

That’s just about all you need from us for now, but as always, we would like to remind you that Club 25 is a weekly publication – expect a brand new article from us next week, so keep checking back for when we have a new shirt going live. Additionally, keep up to date with us on our Twitter page and flick through the site’s Shirt Archive to see what shirts we’ve covered in the past.