Luanvi is a high quality brand at a very competitive price, which is consistent with our aim to bring the best sportswear brands but at an affordable cost.

Luanvi is the kit supplier to Valencia-based La Liga side Levante, which means that the Blue Moon range now features brands who supply five La Liga sides.

In addition to Levante, Almería is supplied by Rasán, while Astore will provide the 2010-11 kits to Sporting Gijon, Real Sociedad and Osasuna.

Rasán has over 30 years experience in the manufacture of sports kits, supplying teams mostly in Spain and France.

Its reputation for quality is well known and in addition to its own line, also manufactures for other marques, notably La Liga club UD Almeria.

Competitively priced, Rasán is a welcome addition to Blue Moon’s football and basketball kit offers.

These are arrived at from the responses of customers to a questionnaire sent out following the completion of their orders.

Customers are given the option of five answers on a scale from worst to best: Very Poor, Poor, Fair, Good, Very Good, and results were:

Product Appearance:  Fair 2%, Good 26%, Very Good 72%

Product Quality:  Fair 9%, Good 28%, Very Good 63%

Value for Money: Fair 7%, Good 31%, Very Good 62%

Dealing With Enquiry: Fair 2%, Good 14%, Very Good 84%

Speed of Delivery: Poor 6%, Fair 2%, Good 18%, Very Good 74%

In answer to the question “What was your overall experience of Blue Moon”, 73% answered “Better than Expected”

95% of customers said they would be likely to use Blue Moon again, and 99% said they would recommend Blue Moon to others.

We would like to thank our customers for their time in completing the survey.

On the contrary, to most people they look like ugly 80′s throwbacks, but that’s only on the outside. Because inside contains a surprise.

This year, Madrid’s least fashionable top-flight club is being sponsored by Burger King, and on honour of that hackneyed “shirt-pulled-over-the-head” goal celebration, the fast food giant have changed the face of shirt advertising. And the face is that of the Burger King himself.

For anyone unsure about this concept, BK have also helpfully provided full instructions on how to achieve this effect, in a move befitting the sort of company who feels it necessary to tell its customers that coffee may be hot.

Providing this secondary form of advertising is legal according to the Football Association’s regulations, the Getafe / Burger King concept does at least give some interesting new ways of getting the sponsor’s message across.

One thing we confidently predict, though, is that if you are looking for your own club’s new kit, then by visiting our website   you’ll find a wide selection of kit styles and colours, and all of them much smarter and stylish than that which the Azulones will be wearing this season, whichever way round.

www.bluemoonsport.co.uk

Unsurprisingly, the wronged side is always the one that finished its league campaign higher.

Let’s start with the Guinness Premiership. After a gruelling 22 rounds lasting eight months, why shouldn’t Leicester Tigers be called this year’s champions rather than having to compete in an end of season mini-cup competition? Will third-placed London Irish take that honour?

To answer that we can take a look at Rugby Union’s once disowned family member, Rugby League. Play-offs have been prevalent in Rugby League since the Northern Union first split away at the end of the 19^th century, when Hunslet and Bradford Northern tied for points at the top of the Yorkshire Competition. It was also used extensively when the two divisions were merged into one and an odd fixture list developed that prevented everyone playing each other twice.

That system ended in 1973 but Rugby League then invented an end-of-season competition, “The Premiership” to generate some more interest. At this point the League Championship was seen as far more important and the new play-off style idea didn’t carry much gravitas until the Super League itself was formed in 1998.

Despite the same resistance as is now seen in Rugby Union, it’s now accepted in Rugby League circles that the Super League Grand Final winners are the champions regardless of where they finished during the regular season. A lot of this can be put down to the play-off system itself, but more of that later.

Football League teams are also competing for promotion with the Championship (Division 2 in old money) play-off final routinely called the richest prize in football due to its opening up of Premier League bounty for the Wembley winners.

Despite the excitement produced by play-offs there’s still a considerable body of opinion opposed to them despite their continued existence since 1987.

To me, the problem is caused by the way they are organised, and this is where the other sports might like to copy the Super League format, itself a copy of the Australian version known as the McIntyre system after its inventor Ken McIntyre.

There are now McIntyre systems for four teams through to eight, but let’s see how the four team version differs from the simplistic models used by the Football League and Rugby Union.

In the 1^st round the highest two ranked teams play each other with the winner going straight through to the Grand Final, but the loser goes into the next round.

The lowest two ranked teams play each other with the loser being eliminated and the winner going into the next round.

The winner of the second round match goes into the Grand Final.

In this way, the top two ranked sides can each afford to lose a game yet can still make the final. Under this system, a side winning the play-off must beat all the teams that finished above it during the regular season.

This is a much fairer way of doing business and I am surprised it hasn’t already been adopted as the standard by other sports.

Whether your team gets itself into the play-off lottery, it can get its football kit, rugby kit or basketball kit from  www.bluemoonsport.co.uk

 But today’s revelation about Sierra Leone international Malvin Kamara has made me re-visit those obsessive compulsive disorders that players somehow think has a bearing on their performance.

 Kamara is currently playing in the lower reaches of English professional football at Huddersfield Town but his odd habit is to ensure that he watches Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory before every game.

 With a running time of 100 minutes, Kamara spends more time watching this Gene Wilder classic from 1971 than he does on the pitch because it “calms my nerves and gives me luck”. It has to be the Wilder version, though. Johnny Depp’s 2005 re-make doesn’t cut it. “The Depp on just offends me.”

 You could fill an entire book with the superstitious behaviour of sportsmen, let alone the fans who watch them, but here are a few examples.

 Like many players, Kolo Toure of Arsenal insists on being last out of the changing room, but this caused complications during his side’s Champions League game against Roma. Teammate William Gallas was receiving treatment and was late back out, so Toure felt he had to wait as well. The result was a yellow card from an impatient referee.

 All-time football great Pelé gave a shirt to a fan and immediately suffered a loss of form. He sent a friend to track down this fan and retrieve the “lucky” shirt. A week later the friend returned with the shirt and Pelé’s form returned. The friend decided not to tell the Brazilian legend that the search had come to nothing and he had simply handed him back the same shirt he’d worn in his previous, lacklusture performance.

 Argentine goalkeeper Sergio Goycochea had an unpleasant ritual that brought him some success. The 1990 World Cup quarter final against Yugoslavia went to penalties and the keeper was desperate to leave the field to relieve himself but, under the rules, could go nowhere. Discreetly, he urinated on the pitch and, because the Argentines won he did it during the semi final with Italy with the same result.

 Aussie rugby winger David Campese’s quirk was to sit next to the driver on the way to matches. He was also another who needed to be the last out onto the pitch.

 According to Dr Tony Westbury of Napier University in Edinburgh, these superstitions hark back to one of the oldest theories in psychology, that “if you execute a certain behaviour and get a pleasurable outcome then that strengthens the link between the behaviour and the result.

 “You get into the habit of doing something because it is associated with winning, and once you get the momentum going it becomes part of something I would call the ‘pre-performance routine’. That then becomes very hard to break.”

 Another all-time great of football, Johan Cryuff, would slap his goalkeeper Gert Bals in the stomach when at Ajax and then spit his chewing gum into the opposition’s half before kick-off. When he forgot this gum in the 1969 European Cup Final, Ajax lost 4-1 to Milan.

 But time has made Cryuff wiser and he advised coaches to make sure players are not affected by superstition. “If it does influence them” he warned, “you can’t play them in the next match.”

 Whether you put your shirt on first or last, right sock before left, you can get team kit from Blue Moon Sport  www.bluemoonsport.co.uk .

When you have so many organisations, each with their own charter, whether it’s called “Fair Play”, “Respect”, “Spirit” or any other name you care to give it, you’re forced to question why attitudes to sportsmanship have changed so much for the worse. Or even if they have at all.

 Usually, perceived bad behaviour on the field, especially when children are involved, focusses on the top-down belief that the attitudes of sports stars as shown on television are negatively influencing grass-roots participants.

Interestingly, spectators of professional sport don’t seem to share that belief. UK Sport (a government body) found that 89% of Rugby Union fans, and 88% of Rugby League followers said their players acted in fair and sporting way. In fact, 59% of Rugby League fans questioned thought players attitudes have actually improved in the last ten years. And fans of both rugby codes overwhelmingly agreed that players are good role models for children. Even the first phase of this survey found that 80% of spectators said there was a play-fair approach by sportsmen in football, cricket, tennis and golf.

I’ve always found the argument that televised sport is somehow an incitement to bad behaviour in itself spurious. If players are allowed to get away with “unacceptable” behaviour this is the fault of rule enforcement. Dangerous tackles, dissent and other unsportsmanlike activities should be stopped by the referee. If the referee doesn’t see an incident, all the major sports now refer televised indiscretions to disciplinary panels. There’s surely no doubting the message that unfair play is punished and not rewarded. Even outright cheating, whether it be the ludicrously-named “simulation” in football or something else, is always derided by commentators and pundits.

On the other hand we’re regularly presented on television with just the sportsmanlike images the authorities wish to promote. Hand shakes all round before games, hugs and embraces afterwards. To the best of my knowledge the latter has never been extended towards the referee but who knows what the future holds?

There’s more evidence that fair play is understood within the boundaries of what the sport’s own governing body deems acceptable. According to the UK Sport poll, 37% of spectators said it is acceptable to stamp on someone who is deliberately preventing the release of the ball, whilst 18% said that, in certain situations, punching is an acceptable part of the game. You wouldn’t dream of applying these standards to say, football or basketball.

I’m a bit long in the tooth and my playing days are well behind me. But when I played there were always cheats and villains; the reckless and the feckless.

I’m not decrying these campaigns but I do wonder how necessary they are. Those of us interested in sport have grown up with a moral sporting code given to us by parents, teachers and coaches amongst others. We all pass that on to the next generation. Most people prefer to win fair. I don’t think so much has changed.

 Please visit the Blue Moon Sport website www.bluemoonsport.co.uk

So, let us introduce them.

Astore is a Spanish sportswear company, a Basque one to be more precise.  Their football kits are worn by La Liga clubs Osasuna and Sporting Gijon as well as by some of the Spanish 2nd Division sides, most notably Real Socieded ( “La ReaL” are known asone of the “grandes” of Spanish football) as well as Eibar and Hercules (Alicante).

In basketball, Astore kits are worn by some of the bigger Spanish sides, Tau Baskonia, San Sebastian and Bilbao.

Mass is an Italian sportswear manufacturer based near Rome. Amongst their sponsorships are a number of Italian Serie B and Third Division clubs.

As ever, these companies have been chosen because of the great relationship between quality and price that they offer.  If you buy an Astore or Mass kit or tracksuit you won’t be disappointed.