As soon as Hull City’s retail arm Tiger Leisure signed a deal with the Matchwinner brand owner Fourex, and re-issued the 1990-92 home shirt in June, it was inevitable that the most iconic shirt Hull City have worn and Matchwinner have made would be similarly re-issued.

We were teased in late November by a Matchwinner cagoule, launched at the same time as the Kappa blackout range. Not based on any specific garment previously used by the Tigers, the cagoule was instead a mash-up of sorts, fusing together the 1988-90 half-zip top and a 1990-92 shell pullover top.

Then on December 14th, we got what we’d dreamed of when the Matchwinner link-up was announced… a reissue of the 1992/93 home shirt dropped at Tiger Leisure, instantly appearing on the present wish-lists of Tiger Leisure.

Royal Mail kept me from getting my hands on one a lot longer than expected, but here’s some thoughts on the re-issue:

1. Though a card carrying kit-geek isn’t going to be fooled by anyone attempting to pass one of these garments off as a Nineties original, this is a very faithful replica. More faithful than June’s 1990-92 home shirt re-issue, which had a smaller parallelogram Jacquard pattern that ran the opposite way to that of the OG shirts. On this shirt the tiger-skin print is a fine replica (remember that no two of the original shirts were identical, the stripes lined up differently on each shirt.
2. The main differences are that the sponsor and crest appliques are flatter than on the OG shirt, which had a raised, foamy application, and the asymmetrical popper studded plackets aren’t quite as thick and tall as on the first shirts.
3. The fabric is a little thinner than the originals, too, but that can’t be visually distinguished.
4. The sizing of the re-issue tiger-stripe shirts is bigger and looser than the 1990-92 remakes. If you needed to size up with those shirts, it’s likely you won’t have to with this shirt, though of course baggy and boxy was the style of the time.

This release alone makes the link-up with Fourex/Matchwinner an utter triumph, but there’s so much more fun that could be had. If they can do such a good job with this most classic of styles, there should be no trouble in giving us remakes of the 1988-90 home, the 1990-92 away and the 1992/93 away.