A league of their own

Huddersfield has been the beating heart of England Netball’s centenary celebrations this year, as the home of the Netball Heritage and Archives Group. 5TH QTR spoke to Michelle Welch and Nutan Joshi from local registered league, Huddersfield Netball League, to reflect on their own history as a league and discuss how they’ve overcome facility challenges in the present.

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Tell us about the Huddersfield Netball League.

Michelle: It goes back to the 1960s where there was a very average group of women, very young women – late teens, early 20s – who had a genuine passion for playing netball and just really wanted to play so they put their heads together to find a way of making that happen. It started with some local youth club players who went to local businesses to try and get sponsorship so that they could get the league up and running and pay for court space. And since then, the league has just grown and grown.

And is anyone still around from the days when it was set up?

Michelle: There are definitely some pioneers who were involved in the committee in those days. And actually, we’ve got a presentation evening this September, to link in with the centenary events, and we’re going to be putting a call out to some of those founders to come and join us. So hopefully we’ll be able to get a few people involved and reconnect with them, hear some of the stories about those early days and share with them how the league has grown.

Amazing. And when you’re playing or you’re organising the league, is there always that sense of history? And I guess this year it’s been brought to the fore, hasn’t it?

Michelle: It definitely has. I mean, it’s mind-boggling to think it’s been 100 years, but even just in terms of our league, just thinking about how much we’ve grown over the years to where we are now, and also the fact that we’ve obviously had a massive change to how our league is run. We’ve moved to a central venue format, and that happening this year, I think is quite significant.

And that’s where the facilities and the funding comes in, is it?

Michelle: Yes. It has been a really long process, going back to around this time last year. It was mainly our league secretary, Anna, who had discussions with members of England Netball, including Charlotte Malyon, the Facilities Manager, and the reason why those conversations started was because as a league, we were finding it increasingly difficult to get our fixtures played within the allotted time. We were having various problems with venues as post-COVID lots of our venues had shut down and we were focusing on school sports hall facilities, which gave us issues with parents’ evenings, open evenings, mock exams, GCSEs and so on. This meant that venues were being cancelled at short notice, with fixtures having to be rescheduled. So it was becoming increasingly difficult to get our season played in the schedule provided and we knew this was a common problem around the country.

So what did you do?

Michelle: We reached out to various facilities asking for support, but we knew about 18 months or two years ago that we were going to have to start thinking about a different way of working in order for the league to continue. We looked at having a shorter season at a different time of the year to try and avoid exams but when we started connecting with England Netball, it became clear that they were really interested and wanted to support us to be able to keep going. And that’s how the conversation started.

And then you looked at a central venue model. Is it a new venue?

Michelle: It’s an existing venue. Kirklees Active Leisure [KAL] is the not-for-profit charity that manages leisure facilities in Kirklees. They have a large sports centre in Huddersfield, with two netball courts. So between us, England Netball and KAL, there were discussions around how we could make it work if we were to use the leisure centre as our central venue. And we supported KAL to apply for an EN grant to create some extra storage and improve the court surfaces, meaning we were able to have three nights a week in which we play all of our fixtures. So we started that in January, and so far it’s been a real success.

So everyone comes together rather than travelling home and away?

Nutan: Yes. On the opening night there was quite a big buzz around the sports centre. We’ve had a big banner made and it’s a permanent fixture now. And we’ve got a massive balcony where spectators can sit and watch games. I think it’s made the netball more family-orientated, and people can just come and watch without any barriers. And we’ve got free parking available after 6pm as well, so that’s a massive plus. Facilities-wise, there are showers and toilets available for everyone to use and we have found that quite a few teams turn up a little bit early to watch the previous game or stay on to watch the following games.

It sounds amazing. Are there any downsides?

Nutan: Not really. It is so nice just to turn up, not have the headache of finding a venue, and it’s the responsibility of the sports centre to maintain the facilities as well. So it takes a lot of pressure off the teams. And it’s helped with umpiring as well, because there’s no confusion where umpires need to be and if there’s been an injury or sickness, it’s very, very easy to get that covered because people are already on site. And they have had the opportunity to pick up more than one game.

Michelle: I guess there was a feeling that teams might lose their sense of identity, and for some a 9pm start is pretty late but it hasn’t really caused us any issues. We’ve spread fixtures out as equally as we can – our fixtures secretaries have worked really hard to make sure it’s evenly distributed.

So have you talked to other regions about what you’re doing?

Michelle: Not really, and we only started in January but so far we haven’t had any real teething problems. There hasn’t been any negative feedback from the venue or from the teams, so it’s working successfully and we’re happy to spread the word.

If people read this and think, ‘That’s a good idea!’ What do they do?

Michelle: We’re more than happy to have initial conversations if people want to have a chat about how we set things up. And I’m sure that people could contact England Netball directly to get that advice and get that support as well.

If you are interested in the idea of a central venue for your league – or if you are a netballer who wants to play in a team in the Huddersfield league – do get in touch with Michelle on hnlchair@hotmail.com or England Netball on facility.development@englandnetball.co.uk