Planning · 3 min read
One per player is the wrong number
Practice arithmetic
The default is one practice top per player, and it fails in the first fortnight of every season for exactly the same three reasons. None of them is anybody’s fault and all of them are predictable.
Where the shortfall comes from
Training frequency is the first. A squad training four times a week with one top per player needs that top laundered and returned four times a week, which assumes a laundry turnaround nobody actually has in the middle of a term.
Forgotten kit is the second, and it is remarkably consistent: on any given session, somewhere between one and three players will not have their top. A coach with no spares sends them out in whatever they arrived in, which defeats the purpose of having practice kit at all.
The third is attrition. Practice gear is worn hard and washed constantly, and a proportion of it will not finish the season — a reality the specification itself should acknowledge, which is the thinking behind how we build gear made for daily wear and frequent washing.
The number most programs settle on
After a season, almost everybody lands somewhere near this.
- Training twice a week
- One per player plus four spares in common sizes
- Training three or four times a week
- Two per player
- Daily training
- Two per player plus a rotating set of spares
- Bibs
- Twice what you think, in two colours — they disappear
Three ways programs actually do it
None of these is wrong. They fail in different places.
| Approach | Works when | Fails when |
|---|---|---|
| One per player | The schedule is light and laundry happens between every session. | Practice runs on consecutive days, which is most of the season. |
| Two per player | The program can afford it and wants no laundry pressure at all. | The budget was going to be spent on something else that mattered more. |
| Reversibles at roughly 60% of roster | Practice needs two sides more than it needs one per person — the usual case. | Every player needs a named garment, which is a game-kit requirement, not a practice one. |
The number nobody calculates
The question is usually asked as a per-player number and answered as one, and that is why the answer so often turns out wrong. Practice kit is not personal equipment in the way a game jersey is — it is a pool, and the size of the pool is set by the laundry cycle rather than by the roster.
The calculation is: how many sessions happen between washes, and how many players are at each. A squad training four times a week with laundry twice a week needs enough kit to cover two sessions, not four, and not one per player.
That is also the argument for reversibles at practice specifically. Two sides means a session can be split without a second garment, so the pool that covers your laundry cycle is smaller than the roster — which is where the saving comes from, and why we describe the reversible as its own construction rather than a printing option.
Quick answers
Should practice tops be numbered?
Number them if a coach runs position drills. Leave them plain if you want to reissue them to a different age group next year.
Do spares need to be the same design?
They should be the same garment. Whether they carry a number is a separate decision and often the answer is no.
Why is it not simply one per player?
Because practice kit is a pool rather than personal equipment. The size of the pool is set by how many sessions happen between washes, not by the size of the roster, and those are different numbers.
How do we calculate the actual number?
Sessions between washes, multiplied by players at each session. A squad training four times a week with laundry twice a week needs enough to cover two sessions — not four, and not one per person.
Why reversibles for practice specifically?
Because a session usually needs to split into two sides, and a reversible does that without a second garment. That is what makes the pool smaller than the roster, and it is where the saving comes from.
Roughly what proportion of the roster?
Around 60% of roster in reversibles covers most programs, with the exact number falling out of the laundry cycle. Send us the training schedule and we will work it through rather than guessing at it.
Should practice kit carry names and numbers?
Numbers often, names rarely. Named practice garments turn a pool back into personal equipment, which is exactly the thing that made the number large in the first place.
Can practice kit use a cheaper fabric?
It can be lighter, and lighter is not the same as cheaper. Practice kit is worn four or five times a week rather than once, so it takes more total wear than game kit does — economising on the fabric here is economising in the wrong place.
Do we need the same reinforcement as game kit?
In contact sports, yes. The garment takes the same grabbing and the same contact; the only thing that changes is that it happens more often. That is why our practice specification is lighter but reinforced identically.
Should practice and game kit be ordered together?
It is the cheaper way to do it — one setup, one fabric batch, one shipment — and it also means the two sets read as one program rather than two purchases made at different times.