Long before replica shirts and sponsor logos, a rugby club's identity was carried by two much quieter garments: the tie and the blazer. Together they built what's still known in rugby as the "Third Half", the tradition of getting properly dressed, after a distinctly undressed 80 minutes on the pitch, to sit down with the team you were just trying to beat.
The Birth of the Club Tie
The story of the club tie starts with rowing, not rugby. In 1880, the rowing crew of Exeter College, Oxford, began taking the coloured ribbons from their straw boaters and knotting them around their necks as a mark of the college they rowed for, as Ties 'n Cuffs records in its history of the necktie. Other colleges, schools and clubs quickly copied the idea, and the diagonally striped "Old Boys tie" was born; a way to signal, at a glance, exactly where your loyalty lay, according to Tieroom's guide to the regimental tie.
Rugby clubs adopted the format almost immediately. A tie in club colours became a quiet, gentlemanly way to display pride in a side without needing to say a word about it; and in some clubs, it still is. The Barbarians, rugby's famous invitation-only touring side, hand every new player a club tie the moment they're picked, a tradition documented by Cinabre Paris in its collection dedicated to rugby that has outlasted more than a century of change in the professional game.
The Blazer's Sporting Origins
The blazer has an almost identical backstory. It first appeared in the 1860s as a bright, often scarlet jacket worn for boating and cricket; sports clubs used it exactly the way they used the tie, as a badge of belonging rather than a piece of tailoring, as Wikipedia's entry on the blazer explains. By 1884, a fashion magazine of the day was already instructing gentlemen "on the river" to pair white flannel trousers with a striped flannel coat; the blazer in its earliest documented form, according to the Victoria and Albert Museum's collection notes on a Leander Club tie.
Rowing clubs took the idea further than most. When the Leander Club settled on cerise pink as its identifying colour in 1897, members began wearing cerise ties and socks to match, trimming their boaters with the same shade of ribbon. The badge sewn to a blazer's breast pocket carried real weight, too: in schools and clubs, it could mark a junior member, a senior, or someone formally "awarded colours" for a genuine sporting achievement.
Colours, Caps, and the Weight of a Badge
Being "awarded your colours" is one of sport's oldest honours systems, and rugby leaned into it heavily. Nowhere is that clearer than in South Africa, where the green and gold Springbok blazer was created in 1906 and is still awarded to national team players today, according to Wikipedia's entry on Springbok colours; one of the few sporting traditions from that era to survive entirely intact. Regimental associations did much the same on the military side, pairing a "regimental blazer" with a tie striped in the colours of their unit, a format borrowed directly from the university rowing clubs that started it all.
The Third Half — Rugby's Ritual of Respect
None of this formality was really about looking sharp. It was about what happened after full time. The "Third Half" (sometimes called the Terzo Tempo in Italy) is the tradition of both teams sitting down together once the whistle's gone, swapping stories over food and a drink, still in club colours. Former Italy fly-half Diego Dominguez has described it, in an interview cited by Sky High Sports' rugby tour journal, simply as the moment when two teams who've spent 80 minutes trying to beat each other sit down as friends. At some clubs it's still genuinely expected: a jacket and tie, not a tracksuit, at the bar after the match.
Cricket carries its own version of the same idea. Members of the Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord's are required to wear their red-and-gold "bacon and egg" tie and a jacket to enter the pavilion at all, as described in this Sport Review piece on the MCC's colours proof that this isn't a rugby quirk so much as a shared piece of British sporting culture.
Why Rugby Culture Is Leaning Into Formalwear
We've already produced club ties for a number of university and student sides, each one built to the same brief a tie has followed since 1880: proper colours, done properly, for a club that wants to be recognised by them. It's a natural next step for us to carry that same approach into blazers and full formal kit, built for the Third Half as much as for the pitch. If your club is thinking about a tie (or something a little more complete) we'd like to hear from you.
FAQ
What is a club tie? A tie striped in a club, school or college's official colours, used to signal membership or allegiance. The format originated with Oxford rowers in 1880.
Why do rugby clubs wear ties after a match? It's part of the "Third Half" tradition; both teams getting properly dressed to socialise together after the game, as a mark of mutual respect regardless of the result.
What's the difference between a blazer and a suit jacket? A blazer is traditionally a standalone sports jacket, often with metal buttons and a club badge, worn with separate trousers. It originated on cricket and rowing pitches, not in tailoring for suits.
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