OD Jersey - Durham School, Gosforth Hoops & Why Old Novo Made It in the UK
by matthew dehaty
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The Old Novo OD jersey (Old Dunelmian) is built around a specific lineage: Durham → Old Dunelmians → Gosforth → the North East rugby identity, with one thread that stays remarkably consistent across the 1800s and beyond: green and white hoops.
Durham School Football Club (DSFC) marks its rugby heritage from 1850, and in 2025 it celebrated 175 years of rugby.
By the mid-19th century, rugby was becoming a game you could replicate, not just a local folk version of “football”, but something with written rules, shared expectations, and organised fixtures.
One of the best examples of rugby spreading by people (not institutions) sits inside the Edinburgh Academical Football Club story.
Edinburgh Accies’ own history notes that Alexander Crombie (the first club captain) and his brother Francis moved to Edinburgh in 1854 from Durham, bringing knowledge of the rules as played at Rugby School and passing it on.
EAFC then forms in 1857 and keeps “football” in the name because it predates the split between rugby rules and association rules.
And the early game is properly Victorian in its madness: EAFC’s first match “kicked off” on 26 December 1857 and “finished three weeks later”, played until the best of seven goals had been scored.
Durham isn’t just ‘a place rugby happened’. It’s a place rugby moved through.
Fast forward a little and you land at Raeburn Place “the cradle of rugby football in Scotland” in the Raeburn Place Foundation’s own timeline.
On 27 March 1871, Raeburn Place hosts the world’s first international rugby match: Scotland vs England, in front of around 4,000 spectators, with Scotland winning by two tries and a goal to England’s single try.
1877: Gosforth forms, and Durham’s colours become the North-East stripe
Now bring it back home.
Gosforth Football Club is formed in 1877, and Gosforth’s own club history states they played “in the green and white hoops of Durham School as many members were ex-pupils.”
That same story is echoed in other sources: Gosforth was founded by Old Boys of Durham School, in whose colours of green and white hoops they played for decades.
“OD” is short for Old Dunelmian the Durham School old boy identity that sits behind so many strands of rugby history in the region. DSFC’s own history frames the impact of former pupils in spreading the game and building its reputation.
Why Old Novo made the OD jersey in the UK
If you’re making a jersey inspired by a very specific British rugby heritage thread, you can’t be lazy about how it’s made.
We chose UK manufacture for four reasons:
1) Craft and control
Rugby shirts live or die on details: collar shape, placket structure, stripe alignment, fabric weight, shrinkage, stitching density.
Making in the UK allows tighter feedback loops. You can iterate faster, fix issues faster, and keep the finished product closer to the intention.
2) Traceability
Heritage storytelling falls apart if the product feels anonymous.
UK production makes it easier to know who made it, where it was assembled, and how the process ran.
3) Small batches without compromise
Old Novo isn’t a giant supplier running 50,000 units. UK manufacturing is a practical way to do smaller runs while still keeping standards high.
You can run limited production, learn, improve, and repeat instead of gambling everything on one massive offshore order.
4) Supporting the industry that built the culture
Rugby heritage in Britain is clubhouses, schools, volunteers, and working communities. UK-made is our way of keeping some of the value closer to home