A week ago, Blades asked us what we wanted in a new kit. We told them. Black, red, white. Patterns that actually fit our sport instead of one pattern slapped across every team. The crest across the chest, worn properly, not shrunk into a corner blending in with the pattern. Maybe even our team name written on the chest instead of a non-identifying pattern - which some of you might like, which in all fairness is why I am reaching out to the student body, staff and members of the SU. 

The very next day, they pulled it. Sit with that for a second: they had a kit lined up for this season, the one we're walking into right now, and they scrapped the whole thing because the five options they showed us got torn apart in the comments. Not because the money wasn't there. Not because Surridge couldn't deliver. Because the designs were bad. And instead of fixing the designs on the same timeline, they threw out the entire year.

That's the bit that should actually make you upset. We're not losing a kit because of some funding shortfall or supply chain excuse. We're losing it because five bad templates didn't land, and instead of going back to the drawing board on the same timeline, someone decided the easier move was to make us wait.

Think about what that actually costs. Third year students who put their own designs in will graduate before they ever get to play a single game in the kit they helped create. That's not a minor inconvenience, that's the entire point of asking for their input in the first place, gone.

I've had the chance to design a kit before and actually wear it, back with my American Legion travel baseball team, and again with my varsity football kit. I went on to play college football after that. So I've had more than one shot at this. Most people here haven't, and won't again. University is not a rehearsal for something else. For a lot of you, this is the one time you get to put a team crest across your chest and mean it. Most of you reading this do not get that back to Uni at 29 and now deal with this two years later... 

If you're a third year, you may not get it back at all. Asking students what they want, hearing it, and then telling the ones with the least time left to simply wait is not a small ask. It is asking them to give something up permanently so the process can be more comfortable for someone else. That someone being an employee whose tasked with handling things of said nature. 

I have had direct contact to Surridge, the club's own supplier, they have said publicly that Surridge is fully capable of producing custom kit for an entire university before the season starts. That claim hasn't been disputed by anyone at the club or the SU, which means the timeline excuse doesn't hold up. Nobody's explained why a decision this significant got reversed within a single day of the vote closing.
 
Here's why that timeline doesn't survive contact with how custom teamwear actually gets made. A design process, students submitting ideas, the university reviewing them, Surridge producing samples, and students signing off on a final version, is a matter of weeks, not seasons. Custom kit manufacturers who supply university and club sport for a living build their entire business model around fast turnarounds before the season starts, because every one of their customers needs kit on the same calendar. That is not a special favour Surridge would be doing Essex. It is the job. A full academic year, or two (just wait and see the games coming up), is not a production timeline. It is what gets said when nobody wants to commit to a real date.

And there's no excuse on the money either.

Blades didn't say "we're thinking about maybe getting new kit if the money works out." They ran a vote, gathered feedback, and told the entire Blades community a new kit was coming this season. You don't announce that to hundreds of students unless the budget is already in place to deliver it. So the money was never the question. They confirmed that themselves before any of this started.

And the SU's own published accounts back that up. The Trustee Board sets itself a cash reserves target every year. This year it was £585,000. They finished the year with £606,100 sitting in reserves, 104% of what they said they needed to operate safely. On top of that, there is a fund that exists for exactly this purpose, the Sports & Society Equipment Reserve, built specifically to pay for club kit and equipment. It had £27,264 sitting in it at year end. Untouched. Not a penny spent from it all year, while this decision was being made.

So when the excuse shifted to "there wasn't enough time," that's the only excuse left standing, because they'd already ruled out money by announcing the kit in the first place. And we've already shown that excuse doesn't hold up either.

Yes, the SU is under real pressure. The University cut their grant funding hard, two years running, £280,000 this year on top of £198,000 the year before, and commercial trading came in 13% behind budget. We're not pretending otherwise. But an organisation that already confirmed it had budgeted for a new kit, and separately finished the year above its own reserves target, doesn't get to fall back on "we can't afford it" after the fact. They never said that. They said the opposite.

What we need:

Kit that actually represents what the teams want and need, not five templates picked for us and voted on after the fact. A real process: students submit designs, they go to the university, then to Surridge, then back to us for final approval before anything is signed off.

Tell us why they binned this season's kit instead of fixing the design on the same timeline, and whether Surridge's stated capability was even checked before the decision was made public.

We want it before the season begins. If that's genuinely not possible, we want a fixed target date, the first of each month, with a clear reason given for why it hasn't been delivered yet, reviewed openly against this petition. Not another open-ended "next year." A date, and accountability if that date slips.

And when it's finally ready, it deserves a proper send-off, not a quiet email announcement. We're asking for a full school spirit week to launch it, building all week toward a Friday kit reveal that feeds straight into Fed Friday. A spirit week is exactly what it sounds like: a run of themed days on campus in the lead-up, decades day, twin day, school colours day, the kind of small daily excuses to wear something daft and get people talking that build genuine buzz rather than a single announcement nobody notices. It gives clubs and societies something to actually take part in beyond their own fixtures, and it gets the whole campus, not just Blades members, primed for what's coming by the time Friday actually arrives. Friday itself is the reveal, daytime on the basketball courts, teams walking out in the new kit for the first time in front of an actual crowd, then straight into an afternoon of teams going head to head in it, relay races, tug of war, a pie eating contest, the kind of daft, genuinely fun stuff that gets people who've never watched a Blades fixture in their life to stop and stay, before it rolls straight into Fed Friday that night, already the biggest night out on campus, so the reveal isn't competing with the one event everyone already turns up for, it's built into it. This isn't about throwing a party for the sake of it. A quiet kit delivery is a shirt that appears in a bag one Wednesday with nobody outside the squad any the wiser. A week like this is what turns it into something the entire student body has a stake in, talks about beforehand, and remembers afterwards, and that's the moment that makes it feel like the wait meant something, especially for the third years who fought hardest for this and have the least time left to enjoy it.

If you've ever pulled on a Blades shirt, this is your fight too. Takes thirty seconds to sign.

If you'd rather not have your name publicly attached, particularly if you're staff or work closely with the SU and want to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest, you can sign anonymously by signing Anonymous/Anonymous. An anonymous signature carries the same weight. What matters is the number, not whose name is next to it.

If you have trouble designing things, please use SORA or ChatGPT to render your vision. 

Please email [email protected] with your rendering