Bagging the best kit bargains

Having encouraged your little darlings to unleash their inner beast, there will be no end to requests for rugby equipment and rugby kit. Gone are the days when an Aertex vest and one pair of shorts covered all eventualities; now your beasts will want training kit, warm weather stuff, cold weather stuff, wet weather stuff (being Welsh, lots of this is required for me as well as them), playing kit, and match day kit. Here’s a top tip too: Having something for your little monsters to come home in to prevent your car being in need of hosing down on the inside can be a real lifesaver (let’s face it, we’ve got better things to do than bother with that! Am I right, ladies?

Starting from the inside out, a good quality skin is a great buy for both those playing and those shivering on the touchline, and the price of these range from quite sensible, to “Good God I could go to Gucci for less!” outbursts.

We’ll come back to the kit, but the other vital purchase (the one that stops you having to take a hip flask or a bar of comforting chocolate along to matches) is the safety gear. These are the essentials for keeping your budding sports stars safe:

Usually a coach will not allow a child onto the pitch without a gum shield, but it has been known, so I can’t stress how important it is to impress upon your budding George North’s the importance of keeping their own teeth!

No, you don’t want your darling’s ears beaten into the proverbial cauliflower shapes, but a rugby head guard also comes in handy when their coach is yelling unpleasant things at them!

Last, but by no means least, are the shoulder guards; these are not strictly necessary, but it does strike fear into the opposition when your team struts onto the pitch looking like Adonises!

When it comes to rugby training kit options, there is frankly no end! Training and playing in all conditions (I do wonder if footballers do that?) requires several little numbers, and then there is the all-important team kit too.  Some teams kindly supply it, but none that we have joined!

I have spent hours battling my way around sports shops, utterly frustrated that they either don’t have what I want, or even more annoyingly, no knowledge of what I want; and then, I finally get home (feeling smug that I have entered the strange realm of men), only for the ungrateful blighters to say they don’t like it or they don’t fit into it! Sigh!

Girls, save yourselves the grief, petrol, and the total stress by doing it from the comfort of your favourite armchair, possibly with a little light refreshment to hand.

Online, you will find dozens of options - frankly, I never knew there could be so many different shaped heads or variations of rugby shirts - and you can ask the daftest questions without fear of anyone sniggering at you.  The prices are way better simply because the suppliers are competing against each other in one place whilst most towns only have one or possibly two shops if you’re lucky, often manned by surly teenagers who look like they would much rather be doing anything other than dealing with you. I digress, I know, but half of them look they’ve never raised a sweat on a sports field either!

If you are buying for more than one child at a time, or even better, a team, online stores are quite happy, in my experience, to offer you a pretty good deal.

I’ve done my bit for fundraising – shaken tins, baked copious quantities of cakes, and cooked enough bacon sarnies to feed each and every team we’ve ever played, but getting a discount is a darn site easier and less time consuming, so go for it!

Shop around online and ask for a better price! We’re in this for the long haul, so if there is ever any chance of getting to Gucci, we’ve got to be clever!