Between 1978 and 1980, the small-town rugby club Rugby Frascati became an unlikely yet significant part of Italian sportswear history. In this short period, the team was outfitted by the bold and forward-thinking brand Pouchain, already known for revolutionizing football aesthetics with AS Roma and SS Lazio. But what makes this collaboration truly remarkable is not just that a rugby club had a technical sponsor—rare for the time—but that its kit design directly borrowed from one of the most iconic football shirts ever made: the red AS Roma shirt designed by Pouchain in 1978.
This cross-sport design choice, combined with an unusual branding decision—the full name “Pouchain” printed across the chest instead of the stylized “P”—made Frascati’s kit both a visual outlier and a unique artifact in the evolution of Italian rugby.
Rugby Frascati in the late 1970s
Founded in 1949, Rugby Frascati (now CUS Frascati Rugby 1949) had developed a strong local identity and produced several national-level players. Located just outside Rome, the club balanced grassroots passion with a semi-professional structure.
In the late 1970s, rugby in Italy was still largely amateur, and clubs often wore generic, unbranded kits, usually produced by local tailors or repurposed from other sports. Sponsorship in rugby was almost unheard of. It is in this context that the partnership with Pouchain stands out as remarkably modern—and somewhat audacious.
Pouchain’s intent: Beyond football
Pouchain had already made waves in Serie A football with its design-forward, logo-branded shirts. Its move into rugby, a sport with different cultural values and less commercial visibility, suggests a deliberate attempt to diversify and legitimize its presence across Italian sport.
For Pouchain, outfitting a club like Frascati may have been both a regional loyalty move (given the club’s proximity to Rome) and a test case for expanding into rugby equipment and apparel—a segment dominated at the time by British and French brands abroad.
The kit design: Tradition meets style
The Rugby Frascati kit designed by Pouchain was essentially a direct adaptation of AS Roma’s 1979 red third shirt. It featured:
- A deep bordeaux red body.
- Horizontal yellow and orange bands across the chest and shoulders—borrowed from the Roma design language.
- White cuffs and collar, adding contrast and structure.
But the most notable change was the branding: instead of the small, minimalistic “P” logo used on Roma and Lazio shirts, the Frascati kit bore the full word “POUCHAIN” across the chest in bold block lettering. This made the branding unmistakable, aligning more with modern merchandising than with rugby’s traditional understatement.
It may have been the first Italian rugby shirt to feature such prominent commercial identification.
Cultural and aesthetic impact
To purists, the shirt may have looked like a football cast-off. But to many others—especially in Lazio’s sporting circles—it was a sign of modernization. The shirt was high quality, visually striking, and completely different from what other rugby clubs were wearing in Serie B or C.
For the players and fans of Frascati, the shirt helped project a new level of professionalism and identity, even if the club remained amateur in structure.
