1995 Warriors Home Jersey

The 1995 home jersey would be the Warriors first official jersey.

The original logo was designed by Francis Allan from the Advertising company Colenso and was released in August 1992. The first tekoteko featured a straight tongue however Warriors CEO at the time, Ian Robson, and Marketing Manager ,Liz Dawson, decided that a curved tongue looked more striking. Unbeknown to both the curved tongue was actually a sign of femininity and showed a lack of courage.

The colours were a cross of the Auckland Rugby League's traditional colours of blue and white as well the green and red of major sponsor DB Bitter. DB Breweries paying close to $1.5 million a year for the rights (some early reports suggested $4 million).


In May 1993 Ansett was announced as the official Airline to the Warriors and the sleeve sponsor on the jersey. Although at the time they weren't yet flying Trans-Tasman the offer they bid far surpassed that of Air NZ.


The main difference between the 1995 jersey and the ones preceding it was the use of the Australian Rugby League (ARL) badge. The ARL having been established that very year.

OFFICIAL REPLICA

Canterbury Clothing CC

The Auckland Warriors official team supplier the 1995 jersey is widely considered the original despite 2 years of jerseys preceding it.

There were two different shades of blue used with the New Zealand made jerseys a darker purpley blue while the Australian made jersey was a more brighter cobalt blue (the official pantone was reflex blue).

The variations in sleeves are so varied it would be difficult to list them all. They range from Ansett text, white box text, logo picture, logo picture with text etc.

REPLICA VARIATIONS - Up until 1999 the ARL/NRL owned the manufacturing rights to teams jerseys and would sell licences to producers.

Lenco

By far the most common version of the 1995 jersey was produced by Lenco though they made two versions.


The more common was exactly like the 1994 version with the Lenco logo above the new ARL badge. Made in New Zealand of 100% polyester which was quite thin.
A much less common version had the full Lenco logo beneath the collar area. Also made in New Zealand of 100% polyester but this jersey was much thicker than the other Lenco.

Peerless

Peerless made two variations on their 1995 jersey. Both had the Peerless arrow logo but one had Peerless and the other had New Zealand in its centre.


The jerseys were made on 100% polyester that was thin and was known to colour bleed quite badly.

Sport M


Sport M was an Australian company that made two versions of the Auckland Warriors 1995 home jersey. One had a heat pressed DB Bitter logo on the chest area and the other didn't. The company I believe no longer exists.


Goodfellows


Goodfellows is another defunct Australian brand. Made of 100% polyester these jerseys are not too common but can still be found. The photo above is courtesy of @nzjerseyhunter on Instagram who found a box of brand new jerseys in Australia from the former owner of the company.

PLAYERS JERSEY


The first kind used had an embroidered blue CCC logo just below the collar in the white area (close up pic at the bottom of this profile). The chevrons and sponsors logos also looked to be heat pressed instead of sublamated though I think it may have been done using another technique I am unfamiliar with as it seems much more flexible than the normal heat pressed material. Almost like a silicon based product.

These first jerseys were used in the trial games, inaugural game against the Brisbane Broncos and at least one more round after that (more research on game day jerseys is needed and being done).


The preceding rounds all used jerseys that looked exactly like the replica jerseys. It appears the sleeves were tailored much shorter than the replicas however. Read the 1995 away jersey entry for more information on that.


Numbers were mostly just plain white and heatpressed. The material was a shiny vinyl material. Examples are rare so we have little to add.


There was another number font used in 1995 that had the CCC logo at the base of the number but that also needs further research. In any case the CCC base numbers seem to be a very rare variation which was hardly ever used. You can just make it out in the Tea Ropati pic above.

And of course we couldn't talk about the 1995 home jersey without going into some detail about the very first inaugural jersey worn against the Brisbane Broncos on 10 March at Ericsson Stadium.


I was very fortunate to attend a members event in 2020 where Tony Tuimavave bought along his actual match worn inaugural jersey and I was allowed to take a few pictures of it. As you can see from the first picture the match details and Warriors logo embroidered straight onto the jersey instead of the usual badge mark this jersey out from any other.

From what I know there were only ever 18 of these jerseys ever made especially for the game. The 17 used in the match and the jersey Willie Poching was given as the games 18th man. There were at least 4 extras on the bench including Poching and Mike Dorreen. The actual numbers used were as per the team list for the starting team but the bench numbers were different.

1. Phil Blake
2. Sean Hoppe
3. Dean Bell (c)
4. Manoa Thompson
5. Whetu Taewa
6. Gene Ngamu
7. Greg Alexander
8. Gavin Hill
9. Duane Mann
10. Hitro Oke'sene
11. Stephen Kearney
12. Tony Tatupu
13. Tony Tuimavave

28. Se'e Solomona
27. Tea Ropati
22. Jason Mackie
19. Martin Moana


What I personally consider THE Holy Grail of all Warriors jerseys in captain Dean Bell's #3 inaugural jersey, hangs in the Warriors Head Office foyer...