Every club car park in the country runs the same scene at about ten past nine on a Sunday. Boot of the car open, rain coming in sideways, one boot found and one missing, a mouthguard case containing no mouthguard, and a parent going back to the house for a towel while the warm-up starts without their child.
Almost all of it is solved by packing the bag once, properly, in September, and then only ever topping it up. Here is what goes in it.
The things that live in the bag permanently
These go in at the start of the season and never come out again except to be washed or replaced. If you take one thing from this list, take this bit — the permanently packed items are the ones that get forgotten, because they are the ones nobody thinks about on the day.
- Mouthguard, in a vented case, with the case in a named pocket rather than loose in the bag
- Headguard, if your child wears one
- A spare pair of laces — laces snap at the worst possible moment and a boot cannot be worn without them
- A small towel, kept separate from the one used at home
- Blister plasters and a roll of zinc oxide or strapping tape
- A permanent marker, for naming things that have already lost their name
- Two carrier bags or a dry bag, for wet kit on the way home
Match-day kit
The bit that changes week to week, and the bit worth laying out the night before rather than gathering in the morning.
- Club shirt, or reversible training top if the club uses one
- Shorts — pack two pairs, because one will end up unwearable
- Two pairs of rugby socks, not football socks and not school socks
- Base layer top, long-sleeved, for anything between October and April
- Boots, appropriate to the pitch, with the studs checked for wear before they go in
- Moulded or artificial-ground trainers if any part of the session is on 3G
- Named water bottle
- Flip flops or slides for the changing room floor
Two pairs of socks is not fussiness. Wet socks are the most common reason a child asks to come off, and the second pair costs almost nothing. The same logic applies to shorts: a pair that has been dragged through a wet ruck in the first ten minutes will chafe for the rest of the game.
On boots, check the studs before they go in the bag rather than in the car park. Worn screw-in studs are the usual reason a referee sends a player off to change, and it is a two-minute job at home and an impossible one at five to ten on a Sunday.
Weather kit — the part everyone under-packs
UK age-grade rugby is played in weather that adults would decline. Children stand still on touchlines for long stretches, and cold children stop enjoying it, which is how players are lost from the game.
- A warm mid-layer to go on the moment they come off — a hoodie or quarter-zip, not the match shirt
- Waterproof jacket, packed even in a dry spell
- Woolly hat and gloves from November, kept in a side pocket permanently
- A complete change of clothes including underwear and socks, for the drive home
Add a spare towel to the boot of the car rather than the bag. Somebody in the team will need it, and it may as well be you who has it. A cheap foldaway camping chair and a flask live in the same place for the same reason, though those are for you rather than for them.
One note on layers: resist putting a child on the pitch in a cotton hoodie under the shirt. Cotton holds water, gets heavy and cold, and cannot be taken off mid-game. A proper base layer under the shirt and a warm top over the top when they come off is the combination that works.
The bag itself
A 30 to 40 litre holdall suits most juniors. Bigger than that and a child cannot carry it themselves, which defeats the point. Look for a separate ventilated boot compartment, because muddy boots in with a clean base layer ruins both. A shoulder strap that comes off the shoulder is worse than no strap, so check it on them rather than buying by picture.
Name it. Then name it again inside. Club changing rooms in December contain fifteen identical black holdalls and one child who will not be able to identify theirs. Name the water bottle, the mouthguard case and the boot bag too — those three account for most of the lost property table by Christmas.
A backpack works for a child walking or cycling to training, but check it takes boots without the boots going in against the clean kit. If it does not have a separate compartment, a cheap drawstring boot bag inside a holdall does the same job for very little.
Wash day, and the Sunday-evening reset
The bag only works if it gets reset. Ten minutes on a Sunday evening beats twenty minutes of panic the following week.
- Empty everything out. Everything, including the side pockets.
- Wet kit into the wash, boots out to be cleaned and dried away from the radiator.
- Rinse the mouthguard in cold water and put it back in its case dry.
- Turn the bag inside out or at least leave it open to air overnight.
- Repack the permanent items and replace anything used — tape, plasters, laces.
The one-page version
If you want a list to stick to a kitchen cupboard door, this is it: mouthguard, headguard, boots, astro trainers, two pairs of socks, two pairs of shorts, shirt, base layer, warm top, waterproof, towel, slides, water bottle, spare laces, tape and plasters, bag for wet kit, full change of clothes. Hat and gloves from November.
Check the club's own kit list against it before the first fixture, because most sections specify the shirt and socks they expect, and some schools require a particular colour of shorts for internal fixtures.
Holdalls and boot bags are in our bags range, with base layers, mid-layers and match kit in clothing and boots on the footwear pages. If you are starting from nothing in September, the rugby section is the sensible place to work through the list in one go.