A new amnesty is allowing people to swap their England shirt (the price of which has been labelled ‘outrageous’) for a literal holiday.
It means that England fans who have splashed out on the new kit could swap it – and our gloomy home nation – for the sunny climes of Spain.
The England shirt amnesty comes from package holiday experts On The Beach, who are targeting everyone who’s been upset by the launch of the new strip this week.
A replica England shirt will set you back £84.99 and the authentic ‘Dri-FIT Adv’ versions that the players wear are being sold at a whopping £124.99.
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Many have also questioned the change to the St George’s cross on the collar of the shirt – it’s now a striped pattern of purples, blues and reds, rather than the usual solid scarlet (personally think it looks alright…)
Even Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer have kicked off about the flag, like there aren’t bigger projects for them to be working on right now.
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Now On The Beach are joining the outraged people online and adding to the call for the strip to be changed.
And in the meantime, if you hate the new kit that much that you can’t bear to look at the one you’ve purchased, you can send it off to the holiday company and they’ll send you on holiday instead.
You can swap your ‘outrageous’ England shirt for a holiday in the On The Beach amnesty. Credit: Nike
On The Beach is promising to swap the £124.99 shirts for a £250 holiday voucher, double the cost of the shirt, to spend on a trip.
Zoe Harris, chief customer officer at On the Beach, said: “Along with millions of England football fans we can’t believe that the England flag has been changed on the nation’s strip.
“British holidaymakers watching the Euros abroad wear that shirt with pride, but we have no doubt that they’ll be wearing classic strips this summer and not this so called ‘playful’ update.
“So, we’re taking action. Anyone who has bought the shirt and wants to get rid can send us the strip and we will give them a £250 holiday voucher in return.”
Nike said that the update was meant to be a ‘playful’ change that would ‘unite and inspire’ fans for the Euro 2024 tournament.
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Zoe Harris added: “I know many of our customers will be repping the retro shirts but if you have taken a punt on the new England strip and you’re disappointed with the unnecessary changes that have been made, we’re here to take it off your hands.”
If you own one of the new authentic England shirts, you can send it to On the Beach’s head office at: On the Beach, England Shirt Amnesty, 5 Adair St, Greater, Manchester M1 2NQ, along with your contact name, address and number.
Fans have until 7 April to send their official shirt in and On the Beach will contact those who have taken part to send them a £250 holiday voucher.
There are also film crews in attendance, who it’s believed are filming for the second instalment of her upcoming documentary, Molly-Mae: Behind It All.
She launched her brand Maebe last September, pitched as offering accessible luxury fashion.
Previous Maebe pop-ups have only taken place in London, despite Molly-Mae living in the north west.
The queues are still raging in Manchester for the pop-up, if anyone was planing to head down.
The 1975 set to release live album of ‘Still… At Their Very Best’ Manchester show at AO Arena
Danny Jones
The 1975 are releasing a live album version of 2024’s ‘Still… At Their Very Best’ tour show at the AO Arena in Manchester.
As someone who was there in the flesh, trust us, it’s a performance worth reliving.
With the Wilmslow-formed Manc adoptees looking like they might be gearing up for another album cycle, not to mention being named as one of the headliners on the 2025 Glastonbury lineup, it seems as though they break from the spotlight is coming to an end.
It’s been two years and a half years since they dropped their last album, Being Funny in a Foreign Language, but they’ve been touring around the world pretty much ever since and now they’ve decided to press one of their concert highlights onto vinyl.
As you can see, perhaps the most striking thing about the upcoming live LP is the artwork for it. Although we can’t put our finger on exactly where it is, the imagery looks to be taken from a housing estate somewhere nearby.
To be honest, it wouldn’t matter whether it was in Greater Manchester or somewhere in their home county of Cheshire, for that matter: there’s just undeniably familiar and undeniably Northern-looking about the whole thing.
How on Earth they’ve managed to look something so normal and mundane somehow poetic and interesting we’ll never know, all we can guarantee is that the recordings pulled for this latest release are guaranteed to be brilliant.
Following the first world tour of their critically acclaimed fifth record, we waxed lyrical over the performance and after witnessing the evolution of that admittedly barmy live set all over again just over a year later, we went so far as to dub them among “some of the best performers on the planet”.
The only dilemma we have is deciding which one we prefer more: January 2023 or February 2024. Having said that, one did include a very special surprise guest…
We’re standing by that claim we made above, by the way; maybe it’s because of just how good that Manchester energy was and exactly why The 1975 boys have decided not just to document it but immortalise that particular gig as a live album.
Not only was it their de facto homecoming gig following a gargantuan world tour, but as it was the second iteration of that first ‘At Their Very Best’ show, the chances were it was always going to get better and more refined.
The setlist included the typical title track opening, ‘Looking For Somebody To Love’, ‘Happiness’, ‘Part Of The Band’ and ‘Oh Caroline’; ‘Robbers’, ‘Fallingforyou’, ‘Somebody Else’, ‘Chocolate’, ‘I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes)’, ‘People’ and many more.
You can find the full tracklist and pre-order The 1975 ‘Still… At Their Very Best live album, taken directly from the AO Arena performance in Manchester, right HERE.
The cover for The 1975 Manchester live album and the moments it captures. (Credit: Dirty Hit/Audio North)
Daisy Jackson -
22nd March 2024 
