New shirt stampede!

16 August 2002

There must be something about Albion fans that makes us especially fond of queueing. You don't seem to hear about it much at other clubs, but when there's something worth having, you can bet that a queue will start to form outside the Hawthorns almost straight away.

Today it was the new shirt which, after a summer of alleged chopping and changing with the sponsor's logo, has hit the club shops just in time for the opening game at Old Trafford. Determined not to miss out, the first few hardy souls pitched up at the ground as early as 5am this morning - causing a handful of stewards to be roused from their slumbers at unearthly hours and summoned to start their organising duties. Over at the Merry Hill shop, half the shopping centre was apparently taken up by the queue for the other branch of the shop - which didn't open til 10:00

Foolishly, I thought the chaos would die down by mid-morning, so I turned up at about 10:20. Driving along the Birmingham Road I nearly turned round again when I saw the queue - out the club shop, down the side of the car park and out onto the pavement past the back of the Brummie. But I thought that having come all the way from Redditch I'd stick with it - it couldn't be that bad...

By 11:50 I'd made it to the front of the outside queue, from where there was a gap to the club shop entrance and people were being called across a few at a time. Inside the club shop, however, the queue turned immediately right, went all the way along the front window, U-turned back again and round the inside of the shop to get to the tills where four people were serving. In the middle of the shop were a selection of the new shirts on hangers for people to look at and try on - so lots of people ignored the queue inside and piled straight across to look at the shirts to the sound of loud "tutting" from those queueing to get to them. Loads of people insisted on taking the shirts on hangers to the counter only to be asked to put them back again as the new ones were all being sold in the bags from the stockroom behind. I finally made the counter at 12:15, bought the full kit - but, typically, had to go back to the middle of the shop myself to get the socks.

Actually, it wasn't that bad - it was all good natured and plenty of group therapy involved in mutual complaining. One guy was on the phone to his mate trying to establish what size he wanted, but his mate hadn't a clue - so he just said very loudly "I'll get you a 'fat git' size then!" "Oy!" shouted the bloke next to me who was queuing for that very size himself. Incidentally, this size (50/52") carries a hefty premium - £42.99 versus standard adult size (38/40, 42/44, 46/48) at £39.99 with kids sizes at £29.99 (and no ten pound vouchers in the season ticket books either this time around).

At 12:30 those joining the queue at the ground still faced a couple of hours delay, and the queuing continued all afternoon with anyone turning up after four being turned away. However, over at Merry Hill the queues had disappeared completely by 2pm, and some who were turned away at the ground managed to get all the way over there and buy their new shirts after all. According to the club's official site, something like 4,000 shirts were sold altogether - and the shop is likely to be even more busy tomorrow with fans wanting to buy shirts before watching the Man United game on the new big screen TVs in the ground.

Was it worth it? Yeah, probably. The shirt is better quality than the away kit, and nice and smooth on the inside. And the logo - the supposed source of all the delay - is identical to last seasons. Sat here wearing it as I type - so right about now, so they say, I *am* the sexiest man in Redditch. Arrr.

Previous Stories:

  15 August 2002:  Two on the way?

  15 August 2002:  AJ's message to fans

  14 August 2002:  Transfers - Good news and bad

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