Key Takeaways

  • Atterbury commissioned a massive Springbok jersey for the “Son of the Soil” rock sculpture outside their head office in Pretoria to support the national team.
  • The jersey is approximately size 25XL to 30XL, covering an area of 5.5 square meters, and cost about 12 times more to produce than a standard fan jersey.
  • Created by FA Workwear, the outfit used professional “bird’s eye” polyester fabric and followed the official design of the Springbok fan jersey.
  • Because the sculpture cannot move, the jersey and shorts were designed with Velcro fastenings along the seams to be fitted like a “superhero cape” and a “nappy.”

How to turn a piece of public art into the biggest Springbok fan in the world… this was the challenge that Atterbury put to AV Strydom from FA Workwear. The result? A humungous Springbok jersey for “Son of the Soil”, the four-metre-high rock sculpture by Angus Taylor, that stands rooted outside Atterbury’s head office in Hazelwood, Pretoria. Strydom shares the details of this unusual challenge.

Your company makes sports apparel and branded merchandise, among other things. Have you ever made any sports outfit this big?
No, I can’t say we have! It was quite a process from Atterbury getting the necessary permissions, to us creating a design to the exact measurements of the sculpture, using the official fan jersey as reference; printing the fabric with a sublimation printer which allows you to transfer the exact design and ensures the fabric is 100% colourfast; assembling it and finally dressing the sculpture. It’s been quite an adventure, and we love to see that it has made the news headlines!

So compared to a human-size fan jersey, how does this one measure up in terms of specs?
The jersey had to cover an area of around 5.5 sqm – the sculpture’s shoulders are about 1,5 metres across, the circumference of his chest is 2.5metres, and his torso is 1,4m from neck to waist.  His arms aren’t 100% symmetrical with the left bicep 10 cm bigger than the right, so we had to adjust the sizing for that too. If you had to compare it in size to a human-size jersey, it is probably around a size 25XL to a 30XL! And it cost around 10 to 12 times more to manufacture than a human-size jersey.

What fabric is it made of – and how close is the jersey to the real thing which the Boks wear?
We used a simple but very strong polyester, called “bird’s eye fabric” that is a breathable fabric, used for real sports apparel. It is exactly the same design as the official Springbok fan jersey that Asics makes, adapted for the specific measurements of the sculpture.

A rock sculpture can’t lift his arms or feet to put on a shirt and shorts; so how did you dress him?
It was quite a process! Luckily our factory is very experienced when it comes to sublimation-type manufacturing. The jersey wasn’t too complicated, as it opens all along the inside seams of the arms, and both side seams. It goes over his head (that head is 1,3 metres around!), almost like a superhero cape, and then it was fastened with Velcro, as far up under the armpits as we could get. It was quite a challenge under the arms as the rock is very uneven under there, with sharp edges, so we had to cheat a bit and tuck it as far in as possible before securing with pins. We couldn’t make the sleeves longer or wider to accommodate uneven sections of rock, because that would spoil the lines of the jersey and look too big and baggy on the sculpture. Same went for the pants, which had to be very tight around the middle and wider towards the bottom to get the best proportions for the sculpture. The shorts work like a baby’s nappy – open along the sides, so that it can be pulled up around his waist and fastened with Velcro.

What was the most difficult part of the entire process?
The design was the biggest challenge, and after that to get it onto the man and looking like the real deal. Lina Moeti, who sewed the whole suit together, is the real artist here; her attention to detail is impeccable.

And how long did it take from start to finish?
It took four weeks from the time we got the order to delivering the outfit. The longest time was spent on concept development, costings, design, sublimation and manufacturing… now that we have the pattern, and we’ve tested it on the sculpture, we could make another one in a matter of days.

What happens to the outfit after the World Cup?
Well, that is up to Atterbury South Africa CEO Armond Boshoff, whose original idea this was! The rock man will wear the outfit up until the final on 2 November. We go around every week for a “maintenance” visit, with Wet Wipes and pins to ensure that the outfit still fits neatly and looks clean and tidy, because it is a public artwork and people like to touch.