Yes, That Kangaroo Leather

I remember being surprised when I first read that soccer cleats (that’s American for boots) are commonly made from kangaroo leather. I was browsing through a soccer products catalog and came across the description. With a child’s naivete (I was probably 10 or so at the time), I assumed that this “kangaroo leather” couldn’t actually be made from those cute Australian animals. I was wrong, of course. Many high-level cleats today are made from the pelts of those adorable marsupials.

Soon to be seen on David Beckham’s feet

The first recorded pair of football boots came when Henry VIII of England ordered a pair from the Great Wardrobe in 1526. The royal shopping list for footwear states: “45 velvet pairs and 1 leather pair for football.” At that time, boots were made from cowhide.Throughout the early development of soccer, cowhide continued to be used to make cleats. The large bovine population in the UK, where soccer was codified, led to the wide adoption of cowhide to make boots. This material was also well suited to players’ requirements at the time, which were more about self-protection, rather than improving touch on the ball. The Wikipedia article on football boots says that they “were originally heavy boots with protection for the ankle, and these remained the standard style of boot in northern Europe for many years where the boots needed to stand up to the rigours of use on muddy winter pitches.”

An old school football boot, likely made of cowhide

But as soccer spread to areas with different climates, a new type of boots came to be used. “A lighter boot without ankle protection and resembling a studded shoe became popular in southern Europe and South America where pitches were generally harder and less muddy and this eventually became the standard style.”

The Puma Super Atom, the first screw-in boot

In addition to making the switch from hi-tops to low-tops, European and South American practitioners of soccer brought about a style of play that valued touch on the ball. As anyone who has used a pair of boots made from cowhide can attest, the material is relatively stiff. To advance the game, new materials were needed.

One material stood out among the various options. It was kangaroo leather, a material whose properties had been recognized since the 19th century, as former British citizens settled en masse in Oz. That Australia stayed a member of the Commonwealth even after independence in 1901 meant that trading connections with the UK remained strong. Australia has been a relatively small contributor to the world game in terms of players, but in terms of materials, its exportation of kangaroo leather fundamentally changed the production of footwear.

Kangaroo leather caught on because it is light, strong, and soft. According to the website Soccer-Boots.com:

Kangaroo hide is the toughest and most durable available and been used to produce quality sports shoes for rugby, American football, baseball, basketball, tennis and cycling shoes for over a century. It is lightweight yet very strong and many times stronger than the same thickness of cowhide. Comfortable and supple it requires no break-in period and gives the player a tight fit with optimal feel for the ball.

There is a scientific rationale for why kangaroo leather has these properties:

The skin of the Kangaroo does not contain sweat glands or erector pili muscles, which would weaken the skin surface. The yellow elastic fibres (elastin) are evenly distributed throughout the skin thickness which gives the leather greater tenacity.

Soccer-boots.com quotes a study that found “kangaroo leather retains between 30% and 60% of its original tensile strength, as compared to a retention rate of 1% -4% for calf and bovine leathers.”

Lotto Stadios, my favorite kangaroo leather cleats

As kangaroo leather has become more and more common in soccer cleats (see this list for some of the most well known ones), some complaints have been raised. Most vociferous is the group Viva!, (Vegetarians International Voice for Animals) which fills its website with complaints that focus primarily on inhumane treatment of kangaroos and the impact that widespread killing of the indigenous Australian animals has on the ecology.

A Viva! protest

Viva! claims that kangaroo harvesters routinely ignore government guidelines on humane killing of the animals. They say, for example, that a “million “joeys” die - battered to death or left to starve when their mothers are killed.”

The large numbers of adult and baby kangaroos killed (Viva! says that, at a minimum, 100,000 kangaroos were killed to make the 500,000 pairs of Predator Mania boots that Adidas sold in 2002) are also an ecological problem. Viva! claims that the so-called kangaroo harvest undertaken to reduce overpopulation is simply an excuse for companies to kill the animals for profit. The effects of reduced kangaroo populations, which are well adapted to the Australian environment, are not completely understood.

Hilariously, an article in The Independent on Viva!’s efforts finishes with a recipe for sauteed kangaroo. It reminds me of this t-shirt I once saw in the butcher’s department of a grocery store.

Viva!, not surprisingly, promotes the use of synthetic materials to make soccer cleats. Until recently, this would have been unthinkable, but several boots have been produced with man-made materials (see, for example, the Nike Mercurial Vapors)

The Danish company Hummel has gone a bit retro in their use of materials. Rather than using synthetics, they have been promoting a new boot that uses goatskin leather.

Hummel’s 4.2 Concept FGC, made of goatskin

One advantage these shoes have is that ten year olds like me won’t wonder if they are really made of hopping marsupials. There is also the benefit that animal rights organizations are unlikely to raise a stink over the use of goatskins in soccer cleats (the cuteness equation goes: goats < kangaroos). Whether they succeed, however, will ultimately depend on their quality. If goatskin can be used to make boots as high-quality as those available today, they may be become commonplace. If not, expect to see kangaroo leather boots for a long time to come.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 4th, 2007 at 9:22 pm and is filed under General, Oceania. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.