Colour-blind fury as Wales will play in red jerseys for Ireland clash
IRELAND’S Six Nations clash with Wales next week will again frustrate thousands of colour-blind viewers — with both countries playing in their home jerseys. Campaigners have slated the Welsh Rugby Union after they were told that the visitors will be in their traditional red, which — with Ireland in green — means many will struggle to distinguish one team from the other.
The onus is on Wales, who could switch to their black change strip and avert misery for the one in 12 men and one in 200 women who have colour vision deficiency. But Kathryn Albany-Ward, founder of Colour Blind Awareness, says her pleas have been ignored. ‘I spoke with (chief executive) Nigel Walker from the WRU personally last spring to make him aware of the issue and before that we’d already been in discussions with their kit staff,’ she explained. ‘Nigel has now said the kit suppliers, Macron, needed nine months’ notice to produce kits for the men’s, Under 20s and women’s teams. Putting aside that the WRU has had more than nine months’ notice, I’ve told Nigel I don’t believe Macron couldn’t produce the kits more quickly as they’ve already been supplying the black away kit since before the 2023 World Cup.’
Under new World Rugby rules to be enforced next year, clubs will be ordered to avoid such clashes. ‘It just feels like the issue has been kicked down the road until then,’ said Albany-Ward. ‘And I don’t really understand why. France managed to play in their change strip against Scotland. I explained that there will be players in the Wales set-up who will be put at a disadvantage because of the clash. Why would you do that to your own team? Last week I chaired a meeting of the UK football authorities and the irony is that the Welsh FA were all over it and said they knew that avoiding colour blind kit clashes would give them a tactical advantage.’ WRU Group chief executive Abi Tierney said: ‘I empathise deeply with rugby supporters who suffer from the colour match which will be evident in Dublin,’ she said. ‘We fully support the World Rugby and Six Nations stance to mandate that visiting teams must use alternate kits to avoid clashes in matches from January 1 2025. Our current alternate kit is black, and we have used green in the recent past. Neither of these examples help with this issue.’ However, Albany-Ward says that is simply not the case and that Six Nations organisers were told green versus black would not cause a problem. Indeed, she gave the green light for Ireland and New Zealand to play in both nations’ home kits at last year’s World Cup. Tierney added: ‘It is regrettable that we haven’t reached a resolution to suit all this season, but I can confirm we are fully committed to correcting that in the next kit cycle.’