Mr Holmes - I am so enjoying reading about Sukan Sports and its history. It gets better every day.
Many of us on these boards are still miffed as to why none of the big brands like Uhlsport, Reusch or Sondico have thought about bringing out a retro range, with those old classics like the 034, 036 or a Clemence Pro Deluxe. I am sure there would be a huge demand for it. (of course todays technology for the palms).
I am sure Shay Given would love to wear a pair of gloves he once drooled over (without ever purchasing mind
What are your thoughts on todays gloves?
Thanks
Rob
One Save doesnt make a Season....
Reply to rocketpants regarding retro gloves. I certainly agree that visually some of the older styles were a lot better than the current ones, but then I was saying this over 20 years ago to the various companies. To my mind the uhlsport range was at its best with the simple cosmetic styles like 025, 034, 031, 036 etc. The uhlsport logo was as large as it sensibly could be and the colours were bold and bright and contrasted well with each other. You could be at a match, watching television or seeing a newspaper report with every chance of instantly recognising the brand of gloves in use and probably the style too. The various suppliers were generally distinct from each other, but now although I am no longer involved and therefore not familiar with the gloves, I find it difficult to identify gloves on television even though the picture quality is far superior. Going back to the good old days, why did uhlsport decide to write their name over the logo, for example the 031 to my mind is far inferior to the 034. The 034 started off with the uhlsport name on the elasticated strap leaving just the logo on the back of the glove. The 031 you will remember had the name on the elasticated strap, across the logo and on the first finger, with the result to my mind that they all blended into each other and had far less impact. If any of you clever people out there are able to reproduce a picture of the 034 next to the 031 you will either see what I mean, or disagree with me. Also the solid bright colours of the 034 are far more effective than the muted multi colours of a glove like the 036. What always amazed me was that over time the various companies were putting more and more money into endorsements, but to my mind becoming less effective in getting their products publicised. Sorry I have had a bit of a rant there. I understand that for various international tournaments rules came in restricting the size of logos and advertising etc., but certainly when I was involved I was not aware of any restrictions for other games. Todays gloves I am not familiar with as I have no involvement but I certainly find them less distinctive from each other than they used to be. Perhaps one of the current suppliers/manufacturers can explain the thinking that goes on when gloves are being designed and whether there are any rules that they have to comply with. I am going to lie down now in a darkened room.
davecav: Reply to adammaniam. My dealings with Raddy Avramovic were all over the phone, as they were with virtually all of the professional goalkeepers I had contact with. My memory is of a pleasant polite man who spoke good english and wore a size 11 glove. He preferred the Sukan/Reusch 124 (Reusch 024) or Sukan/Reusch 122 (Reusch 022) styles which both had the blue smooth foam palm. I believe that he came to England and was with Notts County for about 3 years before leaving for Canada. He then returned to England with Coventry City and played a few games for the first team before a fall out with the manager Bobby Gould ended his career in England. I was aware of his being the Singapore national team coach, having connections with that part of the world. I will be sending to Jimmy shortly a photo of Raddy Avramovic wearing the gloves we supplied him with, asking him to either put it in the media section or to attach it to this answer. When I was doing some work for uhlsport, David Lee was the goalkeeper in the Singapore national team and he also had a sports shop I believe and was uhlsport's distributor in Singapore. Finally, should you or your friends be interested in music, I hope you will visit Harry's Bar in the Esplanade where the main act, Paul Ponnudorai, is my brother-in-law. Thank you for your question.
Reply to adammaniam. My dealings with Raddy Avramovic were all over the phone, as they were with virtually all of the professional goalkeepers I had contact with. My memory is of a pleasant polite man who spoke good english and wore a size 11 glove. He preferred the Sukan/Reusch 124 (Reusch 024) or Sukan/Reusch 122 (Reusch 022) styles which both had the blue smooth foam palm. I believe that he came to England and was with Notts County for about 3 years before leaving for Canada. He then returned to England with Coventry City and played a few games for the first team before a fall out with the manager Bobby Gould ended his career in England. I was aware of his being the Singapore national team coach, having connections with that part of the world. I will be sending to Jimmy shortly a photo of Raddy Avramovic wearing the gloves we supplied him with, asking him to either put it in the media section or to attach it to this answer. When I was doing some work for uhlsport, David Lee was the goalkeeper in the Singapore national team and he also had a sports shop I believe and was uhlsport's distributor in Singapore. Finally, should you or your friends be interested in music, I hope you will visit Harry's Bar in the Esplanade where the main act, Paul Ponnudorai, is my brother-in-law. Thank you for your question.
Thanks for your prompt and detailed response Dave, appreciate it. The photo of Raddy would be much appreciated too!
Wrt David Lee, I'm well aware of his shop that used to be in Joo Chiat Complex --> David Lee Sports Shop. I bought my first football boots, goalkeeper gloves and goalkeeper jerseys from him when I was 10! It was an all Hummel outfit, with Puma 'midfielder' SG boots. Though there are now many shops that carry Uhlsport, though that is probably the only specialist goalkeeper brand we have here in Singapore. David himself was using Puma gloves towards the end of his career.
As for Paul Ponnudorai, I've had the pleasure of seeing him perform before. Do let me know if you're ever in Singapore to visit! Thanks again for your response.
davecav: Going back to the good old days, why did uhlsport decide to write their name over the logo, for example the 031 to my mind is far inferior to the 034. The 034 started off with the uhlsport name on the elasticated strap leaving just the logo on the back of the glove. The 031 you will remember had the name on the elasticated strap, across the logo and on the first finger, with the result to my mind that they all blended into each other and had far less impact. If any of you clever people out there are able to reproduce a picture of the 034 next to the 031 you will either see what I mean, or disagree with me.
Going back to the good old days, why did uhlsport decide to write their name over the logo, for example the 031 to my mind is far inferior to the 034. The 034 started off with the uhlsport name on the elasticated strap leaving just the logo on the back of the glove. The 031 you will remember had the name on the elasticated strap, across the logo and on the first finger, with the result to my mind that they all blended into each other and had far less impact. If any of you clever people out there are able to reproduce a picture of the 034 next to the 031 you will either see what I mean, or disagree with me.
This confuses me, as the 031 as I remember it had no writing on it at all. It was the all-latex glove, with a deep-grooved black backhand. But you are the second person to refer to writing on the logo on the 031, so I have to assume that Uhlsport kept the 031 name for a later, different glove?
You can see the original 031 in this Sukan Sports ad:
http://theglovebag.com/media/p/334.aspx
Chewie just cleared this up for me: the glove with the writing on it is the 0031. Slightly different numerals.
Just to clear up the confusion (hopefully )...
The 1982 031 ...
and the 1989 0031 ...
Thank you to Jimmy for clarifying the situation on the UHL 031 gloves. I am sorry that I did not make myself clear but I am an old person and it was late at night. Because the gloves were not on sale at the same time as each other I tend to forget. Likewise when I started by saying that the good gloves included the 036 this was the red palmed glove with a black back and white logo that we sold in seasons 1982-83, 1983-84, 1984-85, 1985-86. But when I said that the 036 was not so good looking I was meaning the white palmed glove with a pinkish/light mauve back with blue pin stripes and uhlsport on the first finger and across the logo, which we sold in seasons 1992-93 and 1993-94. For convenience we always ignored the first reference number with uhlsport so we sold the UHL 500 jersey, rather than 5 500. I am sure that you all worked out that for the Sukan/Reusch gloves we used the Reusch code but changed the first digit 0 to a 1, unless the glove had inside stitching on the fingers when the 0 was changed to a 2. Therefore the Sukan/Reusch 223 was the Reusch 023. Changing subject I remember seeing somewhere on the site a question about Dave Beasant and Cannonball gloves, but don't remember seeing an answer. If an answer was given or you know anyway I apologise, but the gloves were from a Swedish company Bollkanonens Malvaktskolor, run by Uno Andersson. Their main line of business was running goalkeepers clinics during which they used a machine which fired footballs at a goalkeeper automatically for him/her to try and save. They likened this machine to shooting a football as you would have fired a cannon ball. I do not think that they ever caught on in the U.K. but there was a rumour that Ipswich Town had one of the machines. Their catalogue listed various suppliers (or sponsors?) on the cover including Select. Puma, uhlsport and Blaupunkt video. For the U.K. market their gloves and clothing were too expensive to have any real chance of getting established.
Hi Dave did you have any dealings with any queens park rangers goalkeepers? If so what were the gloves and sizes
Answer to 2 questions from Oldtimer1969 regarding QPR. Between 1991 and 1996 I think it would have been supplying Tony Roberts with uhlsport gloves size 9, and selling gloves to Peter Caldwell in size 9.5. Sukan Sports did not have a great deal of contact with QPR goalkeepers although Phil Parkes did some part-time goalkeeping coaching at the club for some of those years. Phil left QPR for West Ham early in 1979 and Sukan Sports was started in December 1979, so while we were in business his clubs as a player were West Ham and Ipswich. Prior to 1991 I think that only 1 pair of gloves to Peter Hucker was all that we sold to a QPR goalkeeper. However we did supply under their uhlsport contracts gloves to John Burridge (size 9) and Ludek Miklosko (size 10.5) who both played for QPR, but they were not at the club when we were dealing with them. I can think of 2 other players with QPR connections that we sold gloves to and they are Derek Richardson and Ron Fearon, but when they were with Sheffield United and Reading respectively. I hope that this is of interest to you.
Sorry, but your mention of Ron Fearon (who played in the Major Indoor Soccer League) made me wonder if any U.S. professionals at that time bought gloves from Sukan Sports? We had a number of English keepers in the old North American Soccer League.
Also, just to get your general thoughts, what is your opinion about the explosion of colorful goalkeeper jerseys on your watch? When Sukan started, you basically had solid colored shirts in green or yellow and then the makers got really creative with the color palette. It's been toned down in recent years.
I was looking at the sales figures on jerseys you posted earlier and I'm surprised the iconic and highly coveted Adidas two-tone jersey didn't sell more.
Thanks Dave for that info did you supply any other premier league keepers??
Some new "Sukan Sports" images have been uploaded into the media section including pictures of Raddy Avramovic and a photo of Peter Bonetti and Phil Parkes with the Metric gloves.
Many thanks to Dave for the images and his continuing contributions and fantastic stories.
Reply to Larry061. We did not have much contact with the U.S. at all, we had more customers from Canada than the United States which was probably a British Commonwealth thing and the fact that the magazines we advertised in "Shoot" and "Match", I think had larger sales in Canada than the United States. We did have dealings with and sent, for us, large quantities of Sukan/Reusch gloves to Peter Carli in Colchester. Connecticut. He had been in England and had met Phil Parkes while training with West Ham, and had set up his own mail order business in 1982. We supplied him with a few deliveries but being a retail mail order company we could not deal with his quantity and price requirements, so passed his details on to Reusch in Germany. I know he asked them for sole agency in the United States, where they were already selling gloves, but I do not know the outcome. I cannot recollect selling to any U.S. professional goalkeepers in the U.K. or sending goods to known U.K. goalkeepers in the U.S. Regarding styles and colours of jerseys I am, as with gloves, boring and old fashioned. I personally did not like the garish colours very much but we tried to offer our customers a choice from what was available to us, letting them chose what they wanted. We even tried to get the Jorge Campos short sleeved shirts that he wore so colourfully in the World Cup, but although we made contact in the end decided that it was probably not viable. There seemed to be a difference between a jersey suitable for the heat of Mexico and a wet cold winter in the U.K. With reference to the sales figures on jerseys I think there is a simple answer, and that is price. If the adidas two tone jersey had been at a similar price to the other jerseys then it would have easily been the best seller, but being more expensive than our most expensive glove dampened the sales if not the enthusiasm for it. Thank you for your questions.
Hi Dave, did you ever have any contact with any Northern Ireland keeprs during your time? If so who and what gloves?
thanks for taking time out to reply to all us glove fanatics!! Its much appreciated!! :)
Reply to Oldtimer1969. If you go back on this thread to my reply of 14th November this will hopefully give you an indication who we dealt with. Sukan Sports started in 1979 and finished in 1995, so although the Premier League had started by this time all of the goalkeepers had sorted out personal glove contracts and the days of us supplying top goalkeepers had gone. When we started this was not the case because the German latex gloves were not so widely available and therefore some goalkeepers playing in the English First Division were still buying gloves. Over the years this changed to most of them having arrangements to get gloves free of charge and a few of them even had paid contracts. When Neville Southall wore Sukan/Reusch gloves in the Cup Final we were only supplying him with free gloves, no payment was involved. Then as the years continued to pass more and more goalkeepers got contracts, and our sales of gloves to professionals declined. Obviously having a top goalkeeper wearing a brand helped sales of that brand, but I could never see that the amounts some of the goalkeepers were paid was justified.