WATCH: Opening a Rugby League Mystery Shirt Box

The sheer quantity of different shirts these days has led to a huge increase in kit culture, particularly in football.

Mystery boxes, where people can pay to be sent an unknown shirt to add to their collection, have become popular and so we were very excited at Love Rugby League towers when we stumbled across a Rugby League Mystery Box.

We paid £50 for each for three mystery boxes, that included two shirts each. The box description was: “2 Rugby League items that could include a Shirt, Jacket, Sweatshirt.”

There was no way of excluding teams, so there’s every chance you may get a shirt of a rival team – and as we did, a chance you’ll get a lot of Yorkshire!

Check out the video below:

Rugby league doesn’t do enough to celebrate what it has, and even though there aren’t a huge number of teams, I’m sure there is a great number of shirts out there.

We’re going to make it our mission to start collecting more shirts and memorabilia at Love Rugby League HQ, and maybe we’ll start doing something similar in the future.

The mystery shirt box came via Peakee Vintage – the only downside for us was that the shirts didn’t come in a box; instead the six shirts were just bundled inside a grey packaging bag, so you didn’t perhaps get the same buzz as opening a professionally created and wrapped box, as you see in football.

The shirts themselves were good – the England World Cup 2000 shirt was a particular highlight, as were the Leeds shirts from the early Super League days.

What struck me most was the lack of sponsors on the Leeds shirt, which made it a real beauty – and the late 90s shirt was a real throwback to the early Super League days and you can see the clear influence of “Americanism” and franchise sports with the “Rhinos” on the front.

The old Wakefield shirt had a couple of quirks too – a major sponsor in Sainsbury’s, commonplace at the time although it’s believed that the presence of big companies like this wasn’t as cash-generating as hoped, and the inclusion of the club website on the front of the shirt.

There is clearly a volume of shirts out there, so it will be interesting to see if stuff like this gains traction.