GripFlex Sponsors Rushall Olympic U9s Girls and U12s Boys
by Kevin Hickman
Two teams. Two strips. Our name on the front of both.
GripFlex is the kit sponsor for two Rushall Olympic Football Club youth teams for the 2026/27 season — the U9s Girls and the U12s Boys.
Both squads wear the same two strips, and both carry GRIPFLEXOFFICIAL.COM across the chest. Not a logo tucked on a sleeve. The whole front.
The home strip
Amber and black, in Rushall's colours, with the club's badge on the chest and our name underneath it.
Behind the goal there's a board that reads Community Football For All. That's the entire reason we're there.
The away strip
The away kit is the one we're quietly proud of. Teal and petrol, carrying the club's torch emblem rather than the full badge, with a repeating Rushall pattern woven through the fabric that you only notice up close.
It's very close to GripFlex's own colour, which was a happy accident rather than a design brief.
Why a girls' team matters to us
Sponsoring the U9s Girls was deliberate.
Girls' football is the fastest-growing part of the grassroots game in this country, and it's still the part most likely to be running on donated kit and parent goodwill. If a brand says it backs football, that should include the girls' side of the club, not just the boys'.
It also matters to where GripFlex is heading. We started with grip socks for footballers and we now make performance kit for women too. Backing a girls' team isn't a marketing angle for that — it's the same belief, at a younger age group.
Why we spend money on this rather than ads
GripFlex is a small Midlands brand. Every pound spent on a kit is a pound not spent somewhere easier to measure.
We do it anyway, for three reasons.
Grassroots clubs run on volunteers and subs. Kit is expensive and it's usually the thing stretched another season. Taking that off a club is a real, immediate help.
Our products are built for exactly this environment — winter pitches, 3G, a squad of kids who'll test grip socks harder than any lab. If our kit can't handle Sunday morning in Walsall it isn't good enough.
And it keeps us honest. It's easy to write "designed for real players" on a website. It's harder to stand on the touchline in the rain and watch whether the thing actually works.
About Rushall Olympic FC
Rushall Olympic is a long-established club based at Dales Lane in Walsall, with a senior side and a youth section running teams for boys and girls across a range of age groups.
You can find the club at rofc.co.uk.
The kit our players wear
Every GripFlex-sponsored player gets our grip socks as part of the deal — the same ones we sell, not a special version.
You can find them here: grip socks, sock sleeves and shin pads.
If you run a grassroots team in the Walsall area and want to talk about kit, get in touch through our contact page.