New Munster kit and logo to save revenue, not exploit fans

MUNSTER rugby chief executive Garrett Fitzgerald has insisted that the introduction of a new crest for the coming season does not signal the onset of rampant commercialism from the Celtic League champions.

Munster officials and players gathered in Limerick on Tuesday night to launch their 2003/2004 campaign, announce their squad and also unveil a new playing strip designed by kit suppliers Canterbury.

The new attire sports a new logo which, while incorporating the three crowns, also features a stag.

While admitting the new look was in part due to a need to maximise revenue opportunities, Fitzgerald denied Munster were following the route of top soccer clubs across Europe by exploiting the loyalty of their fans with regular updating of both crest and kit.

“That’s obviously a very topical issue,” Fitzgerald said. “But what people don’t realise is that the Munster kit has been changing every two years for the last six years. So it’s nothing new.

“The changes are necessary but at the same time have been kept to a minimum.

“People can still wear their older jerseys to matches. We haven’t gone for changes to the colour. It remains very much a red jersey although there are elements of blue put into it.

“But that’s the commercial era and market that we’re in. It’s obviously very much pushed by the producers and the designers rather than by us.

"So what we do is try and arrive at a halfway house that keeps everyone happy. But the change has been minimal and we’re very conscious of the association of red with Munster.

"We kept that and there was never any discussion of it being changed The Munster chief executive said one of the fundamental reasons for the new badge was that the existing provincial crest is not a symbol owned by the Munster branch and therefore freely available for all to merchandise.

The new crest is the property and patent of Munster rugby, thus protecting it from any unauthorised use.

Fitzgerald added: “Munster have been involved at the lop level in Europe for the last number of years but when you go to England and France and Wales and see how these things operate you realise we’ve probably been a bit later than others getting into professionalism.

“It’s quite necessary to try and maximise every opportunity you can for yourselves. So if there is some revenue that can be put back into the team to make it better, and it can be generated from merchandising sales, it’s part of our job to make sure that it happens.

“When you patent it, you prevent unauthorised use of the crest. It gives you an outlet to protect your crest and an authority to police it. The previous crest was a generic Munster crest so I wouldn’t say we were necessarily a victim in the past.”

Fitzgerald added that the decision for change was not taken lightly and was a product of two years of planning, research and design.

“The first decision we made was to try and maintain the three crowns in the crest.

“So we set about seeing what we could put with it. We went to a lot of university history departments and they gave us three options that might be synonymous with Munster.

"We felt that the red stag best represented what Munster rugby was about, given that it is an aggressive, competitive type of animal.

" They are still in the province itself and have been for centuries. There was a lot of work went into it and that’s why it took two years to see it through. We felt it was better to do it correctly than rush it out.”

And having painstakingly produced the new crest, Fitzgerald is not about to order a redesign anytime soon.

“We don’t intend to change it anymore, we don’t want to change it again. That’s the commitment. There’s quite a lot of expenditure involved in the design, the registering and the patenting of these things and you don’t go a second time.

"If you do, it really means you’ve done a really bad job the first time. I’m very happy with the whole crest, I think it reflects what Munster is about.”