For the sake of argument, let’s say that Freo’s improvement isn’t a blip and we’re playing finals in the next few years. How long before we get a jumper change?
Looking around the stadium, there are only a few hold-outs on the old colours, which means everyone has probably got their fill of current Dockers merchandise already. That means merchandise sales have probably plateaued. Sure, they’ve experimented with adding some grey here, or blue there in the polos and hoodies, but as far as jumpers go there really isn’t any reason to buy a new jumper when a 2012 jumper is basically identical to a 2019 jumper.
You can’t really foist a change on members when things are going badly on the field, so you’d likely wait until the worm has turned a bit and everyone is excited about footy again.
My prediction: if Freo makes the finals this year or next, we’ll have a new jumper within a year. My guess is it won’t depart too much from what we have now, but if will be different enough that people will need to buy something new. If I had to guess, it will be something like a black jumper with purple chevrons introduced as a ‘third’ jumper initially - maybe just worn when we have twilight games or something - then when it sells relatively well you’ll see a story about how the players love the tough new black jumper, and it will become our home jumper for the 20201 season. A whole new range of mostly-black-with-purple-trim merchandise replaces the purple gear.
You know it makes sense. Rosich doesn’t have an EFAT to build, the novelty of the stadium will have worn off, he has just had the rush of sitting at the trade table, and is stuck in Cockburn with nothing much to do. You don’t think he won’t find a way to insert himself in some situation? He doesn’t strike me as much of an ideas man, so he’ll have no choice but to go back to an old play in the name of hitting his KPIs.
Hypen's 'I told you so' post (notwithstanding that he actually means Yeti told us so) reminded me to record this for posterity now.
