How to Spot a Fake GAA Jersey
The topic of how to spot fake football jerseys is well covered with numerous sites and videos helpfully showing you how to identify a fake. The likes of Depop and Vinted are flooded with fakes and once you educate yourself it makes it easier to spot fakes and always ask the seller to post or message you pictures of the relevant codes and tags.
Unfortunately, the era of fake GAA jerseys is upon us. While there's been a small number over the last few years, mostly of the bigger counties such as Dublin, Cork and Galway, we're now seeing both a greater number of counties and a greater range of jerseys. From what we've seen the most common fake GAA jerseys were the 2021/22 Dublin goalkeeper, 2020 Wexford, 2018 Galway away, 2022 Kerry and 2021 Cork. But now there's fakes of Antrim, Derry, Waterford, Mayo, Limerick and Meath as well fakes extending to include training jerseys and tank tops. Very often the collar size claims to be tight fit, although as always the case with fakes the size may not be true to the original tight fit size.
You may ask why would manufacturers of unofficial jerseys bother with county jerseys? Wherever there is money to be made they’ll pump them out and they are cheap to make. DHGate are one of the main culprits and currently list fake Tyrone, Kerry and Tipp, Derry and Dublin jerseys, among others.
So how to spot a fake GAA jersey? Straight away you’ll notice a very different material feel. They are always much heavier and have a coarser feel compared to an authentic O’Neills or Azzuri jersey. Secondly, the wash label is on the lower inside right on an official O'Neills jersey while a much smaller and more basic label will be on the lower inside left on the fakes. Plus it’ll have a small pen mark. For Azzuri, a large blue collar label with size; small, medium etc will be on the official jerseys while a small white label with a letter showing the size; S, M, L will be on the fakes.
Labels on a fake O'Neill's jersey
Label on an authentic O'Neills jersey
There are other smaller details such as county crests and stitching not being right but the above are two of the easiest ways to identify a knock-off. Lastly if you see one listed with a tag attached to the collar with the words 'Performance Sports" then avoid! If you do mistakenly purchase one from Vinted you can claim a refund from the seller as selling knock-offs is against Vinted’s rules and the seller can be shut down so it's in their best interests to give you a refund.
If the manufacturers of fakes ever get around to matching the material and sticking a more convincing wash label on, like they do with football jerseys, then O’Neill's will need to get their act together because they don’t provide a product code like Nike, Adidas and Kappa do, meaning it would be extremely difficult to spot a fake Gaelic jersey.