New season, new kit bag, and somehow always something missing. This is the equipment checklist worth saving to your club’s group chat, broken into what you genuinely need, what makes training better, and what matters most: keeping players safe.

Matchday Essentials

Every fixture needs these basics sorted before kick-off, no exceptions.

• Match balls and training balls — kept separate, since match balls need to stay in better condition. Check they’re FA-approved and the right size for your age group.
• A ball pump — genuinely easy to forget, genuinely impossible to play without.
• Bibs — for splitting squads in training and identifying substitutes on matchday.
• Corner flags and nets — some pitch hire includes these, some doesn’t. Confirm with your venue before assuming.
• A whistle — for coaches running training sessions, not just referees.
• Mobile goals — essential if your pitch is a public park or school field without permanent posts. Look for a set that assembles quickly and comes with proper ground anchoring.

Training Session Kit

Beyond matchday, a coach’s bag needs its own separate set of tools.

• Cones — the cheapest, most versatile item on this entire list. Marks out dribbling channels, passing lanes, and pitch boundaries in seconds.
• Coloured training markers — an alternative or addition to cones, useful for splitting a training area into zones quickly.
• Agility ladders and poles — for footwork and change-of-direction drills. Not essential for a first session, but a genuine upgrade once players are ready to build on the basics.
• A coaching board — for explaining set pieces, formations, and drills visually rather than just talking through them.
• A coach’s notepad — for tactical notes and session planning, more useful than it sounds once a season gets busy.

First Aid: The Non-Negotiable Category

This is the part of the checklist that matters most, and it’s the one section worth never letting run low. Every football club, at every level, should carry a comprehensive first aid kit, and FA-affiliated clubs are expected to prepare for every medical eventuality, not just minor scrapes.

What a proper football first aid kit needs:

• Sterile dressings and bandages, plus tape to secure them
• Moist wipes and vinyl gloves
• A resuscitation face shield
• Safety pins and an instruction leaflet
• Small scissors, nail clippers, and tweezers
• Instant cold packs (the break-to-activate kind travel well)
• Freeze spray for minor knocks and strains

Beyond the physical supplies, every kit also needs:

• A written emergency contact list for every player, coach, and relevant medical contact
• A basic first-aid guidance leaflet, since this is genuinely no substitute for proper training, but useful while help is on the way
• A clear restocking habit, since grassroots football burns through basic supplies faster than most committees expect

For adult teams specifically, it’s worth resisting the urge to overpack. A medium-sized kit with sensible compartments and a regular restock habit beats an oversized bag nobody can quickly find anything in during an actual incident.

The Items People Forget Until They Need Them

• A ball pump and spare valve needles — a flat match ball ten minutes before kick-off is a genuinely avoidable problem.
• Spare bibs — someone always loses one mid-season.
• A waterproof bag for balls — storing balls properly extends their life significantly, and a damp changing room does no favours to anything left in a standard kit bag overnight.
• Water bottle carriers — especially for youth sessions, where staying hydrated matters more than most coaches initially account for.

Building Your Checklist Around Your Team, Not Someone Else’s List

Not every club needs everything on this page, and that’s fine. A club training entirely on a 3G pitch with permanent goals doesn’t need mobile goals. A small Sunday league side without a dedicated youth section can skip anything aimed specifically at younger players. The right approach is matching equipment to your specific team’s age group, ability level, and training environment, rather than trying to buy everything at once.

What shouldn’t be treated as optional, regardless of a club’s size or budget, is the first aid section. Everything else on this list makes training better or a matchday smoother. First aid supplies exist for the moment nobody plans for, and that’s exactly why they need to be checked, restocked, and genuinely ready every single week, not just assumed to still be there from last season.

A Simple Pre-Season Way to Use This List

The most practical way to turn this into something your committee actually uses is to run through it once before the season starts, and then again roughly every four to six weeks once matches are underway. A quick audit at the start of the season catches anything missing from last year’s kit bag before it becomes a matchday problem. A recurring check partway through the season catches the things that quietly run out without anyone noticing, particularly first aid supplies and cones, which tend to disappear fastest.

It’s also worth assigning ownership of the kit bag to one specific person, rather than leaving it as a shared, informal responsibility that nobody quite feels accountable for. A club that knows exactly who’s checking the first aid kit each month is a club far less likely to discover a missing item at the exact moment it’s needed most.

Where to Start If You’re Building a Kit From Scratch

For a brand-new club working from nothing, the sensible order to buy in is: match and training balls first, since nothing can happen without them, followed immediately by a proper first aid kit, since player safety can’t wait until the budget allows for it later. Bibs, cones, and a ball pump come next, covering the basics of running an actual training session. Mobile goals, if your pitch doesn’t already have permanent posts, and any of the more advanced training aids like agility ladders can reasonably wait until the fundamentals are covered and the club has a season or two of experience behind it.

Building a kit list this way keeps a new club’s spending focused on what’s genuinely needed to function safely and properly, rather than spreading a limited first-season budget too thin across everything at once.