Written by Mike Carter, Hull KR Shirts
2023 was a brilliant year for the Robins. It included some truly amazing moments both on the field and off it. I think it is safe to say that a rising tide raises all ships, and I feel that has been the case for me and Hull KR Shirts. The feel good factor that surrounds Hull KR has crossed over to my platform too, and has helped me deliver the best social media ‘numbers’ I have seen in the 5 years that I have been showcasing my Hull KR shirt collection.
During 2023, hullkrshirts.co.uk was viewed by over 8,000 people for a total of 16,109 page views, blowing our 2020 record of 11,207 out of the water! A lot of this was down to our collaboration with Hull KR on the recent preview of the Marble Alternate kit, which unsurprisingly was the most viewed article on the site with 4,566 page views. It is good to know that even without that article, I would have likely still beaten the 2020 website views. 2020 was a year when I had a lot more spare time to be able to complete more website based content, so this feels like an achievement in itself.
TwitterX is still our most popular platform, closely followed by facebook, then Instagram. We launched over on Threads in 2023, so feel free to join in the conversation over there if you haven’t already.
YouTube: Talking Shirts
Hull KR Shirts YouTube channel has grown to having 158 subscribers (31 more than 01/01/2023) for the fortnightly episodes of Talking Shirts. The channel amassed 4,072 views during 2023, across the 132 videos (including special editions and shorts) available to stream. A total of 14,889 views have been counted since we launched the channel in late 2019.
2023 also saw me cover a shirt that wasn’t a Hull KR shirt for the first time, as we paired up with Hull Masters RLFC to cover their 2023 shirt! It was a cool experience for me and something that hopefully helped bring some awareness to Hull Masters RLFC. The year ended with the launch of EP97 featuring a home shirt from the 1977/78 season. 2024 will see us surpass 100 standard episodes of Talking Shirts, something that didn’t feel possible when I started out in 2020. If you fancy a laugh, go back and watch EP1. It is a minor miracle that we have made it this far! EP100 features a shirt worthy of being covered in a landmark episode, so keep an eye out for that.
I made a very small number of 2024 calendars ahead of Christmas, and these sold out within just a few weeks of me receiving them. They’re nothing like the 2022 calendar’s that the club produced, but the fact that people went out of their way to buy something that I created was very humbling, so once again, thank you!
How’s the shirt collecting going?
I have ended 2023 with 164 player shirts in my collection, the biggest number I have ever held in one go. This is a number that might need to be decreased slightly to make way for new additions. Although, this is something that I often say… I will likely just find more space instead. The replica shirt count is also at a very respectful 77, with only just a few shirts missing from the collection since 1990 now. I have an unbelievable amount of training wear, to the point I daren’t even count how much. I have rails and boxes full of random stuff. It appears that if it has a Hull KR badge on it, I will buy it!
The biggest ‘miss’ of the year was not finding a match-worn shirt from the Challenge Cup Final at Wembley. As you can imagine, this was such a huge moment for every player that took the field that day, resulting in the likelihood of the shirts staying with each player, and rightly so as well! Usually, a player would have two shirts for a final, but due to an issue with the shirts that were intended to be used for the final, each player only had one shirt embroidered with game detail. If I had everything, collecting wouldn’t be fun as it is. It’s the shirt gaps (shirts that I don’t have a representation of in my collection) that keep the joys of hunting there for me. However, I do have one of the shirts that were intended to be worn at Wembley, and that will provide a brilliant special edition of Talking Shirts in the future.
Once again, I would like to thank Steve of Steve Leaming Plant, Andrea & Andrew of White Oak Cottage, and the team at Hull KR for their support throughout 2023. Everything you do for me and Hull KR Shirts is greatly appreciated. Your brands add value to me meeting my aim of showcasing and preserving a collection of match-worn shirts that now cover 6 different decades!
What does 2024 look like for Hull KR Shirts?
That is a good question. I hope to make more time for the website to improve the quality of the content. It will be a tough task to beat the numbers that have been set in 2023, but I am going to endeavour to make it a reality! As always, it would be nice to enhance my collection of shirts, but that gets tougher and tougher each year. There are some players who have managed to elude my collection, so it would be nice to pick up a shirt worn by Danny McGuire or Josh Mantellato. Previously, I had shirts issued to Clint Newton & Josh Hodgson, and ever since, I have had sellers remorse, so a shirt worn by either of them would be a great find in 2024, too!
One motto that I live and collect by is, ‘Don’t spend time worrying about what don’t you have, spend that time looking after what you do have’. That is something that I will continue to do in 2024 and beyond.
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