Respecting our past. Building our future. We’re proud to introduce our new Eccles RFC Mini & Junior 2025/26 season match kit, with the history of our club and our community woven in. Check out the details and you'll see a chronicled record of the streets, landmarks and grounds that have played a part in the Eccles story .
Work began on the new shirt design back in January with the concept of incorporating a map of Eccles discussed with our kit supplier O'Neills. Once the technical challenges of reproduction were identified and solved, the artistic challenge of producing the cartography began.
Research lead to the creation of a master map, stitched together from multiple high resolution scans of an old survey of Eccles circa 1900. On to this artwork the positions of the club's former grounds around the district were plotted and dated. If you study the map you'll see that construction of Gorton Street had only just begun when Eccles were playing at the old Barton Ground on Edison Road.
The map artwork was designed and built in digtial layers to allow for the repositioning of typography so it would sit within the navy hoop sections on the playing shirt. After many weeks of refinements the Map artwork was passed on to the O'Neills studio, who added sponsor logos and ran fabric tests to check legibility and colour before we moved into full manufacturing production in June.
To complete the new 2025/26 kit the Minis & Juniors will adopt Navy shorts in line with our Girls, Womens and Mens teams who made the change last season.
Coaches and managers will be pleased to know we're going to produce a matching Eccles map volunteer's T Shirt so they can feel as proud and look as smart as the kids do!
Sincere thanks to our Mini & Junior sponsors - Clearview, Identity Consult, Impact Catering, Seddon and ISS - for thier generous and much appreciated support.
