Balmain Tigers - Up With The Play

So subtle, yet so prominent. I'm talking about the background image chosen by the designer of Tigers, Balmain.

For those of you who aren't quite up with the play, The Balmain Tigers (formally known as the Sydney Tigers) were one of the original rugby league football clubs in New South Wales, Australia. So, they are right on the ball (excuse the pun) with the choice of their leathered textured background. The website is based around the clubs services - dining, entertainment and functions. Every aspect of the site, from font selection through to the choice of images, just emphasizes relaxed fun, don't you think?

By now you must have picked up that I am a rugby league fan - it's what we enjoy down here, I am a Kiwi after all (and we're not part of Australia ;-).

Putting aside the "fun" aspect of the site, the website seems to develop quite a classy feel to it. Being able to "Refine" your search on the Entertainment page without the page having to reload is excellent. The information is clear, precise and can easily be targeted. What more could you want? The navigation is replicated at the footer of the site (including sub-pages) which increases the websites usability ten-fold, the headings are clear, all content is legible and to top it off the websites eye flow is great, constantly leading the users eye to the desired content.

Images throughout the site (as mentioned earlier) have been used extremely well. The scale and quality is superb and they definitely add the "wow" factor to the Tigers Balmain site. The use of a JavaScript library has given the site a polished look and feel. In their case, jQuery has been utilized across many of the pages.

However, there was something that was bugging me the whole time I was on the site. The entertainment boxes that seem to appear on each page.
I have no problem with boxes being there, but the colours that are used in them could have been chosen a little more wisely. They don't seem to fit terribly well with the rest of the site. They are, after all, almost their own advertisements for other sections of their website. They have full control over them.

Enough of that, time for the weekend.
Till next time.

Matt Evans