We all know that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side and that is something that Niki Hazell certainly subscribes to.

She has been putting her heart and soul into Shipton Oliffe Hockey Club for a remarkable 37 years and shows no signs of stepping away any time soon.

Talking of grass, if there’s one thing Niki could change over those near four decades, it’s the requirement that all league matches are now played on an artificial surface.

“Yes, I did like playing on grass, it was a great leveller,” she laughed. “The league brought in this ruling about 16 or 17 years ago that matches could no longer be played on grass.

“The good thing for us about playing on grass was that other teams with younger players weren’t used to it. The ball would roll very differently and it certainly helped us against some of the better teams.

“But if we hadn’t started playing our home games on the astroturf at St Edward’s School in Cheltenham, the club would not have been able to continue playing league hockey and would probably have folded.”

That would have been a great shame, of course – this year Shipton Oliffe are celebrating their 70th anniversary.

These days, the club play in Severn Division Two of the West Clubs’ Women’s League and their 21st-century home is certainly a far cry from the club’s early years when the country was adjusting to peace-time post-World War Two.

“The club was started by Ivy England, who lived in Shipton Oliffe,” explained Niki. “Her husband suggested she start up a ladies’ hockey team to play for Shipton Sports Club which was already quite well established.

“The club played in a field next to the village before moving to a pitch behind the Frogmill, and that’s where we played for years. We had a good groundsman called Reg and he made sure everything was spot on.”

Niki does her bit to make sure everything is spot on too – as well as playing as often as she can, even at the age of 52, she is the club secretary as well as the fixture secretary. She’s also captained the club in two short spells in the past.

She learned to play hockey as a youngster at Westwoods Grammar School in Northleach and joined Shipton Oliffe at the age of 15 at a time when the likes of Blondie, Olivia Newton-John and Diana Ross were prominent in the music charts and proving that girl power was around long before the Spice Girls laid claim to it in the mid-90s.

And she’s not the only one who has put so much of her life into Shipton Oliffe.

“The average age of the team is in the 40s,” Niki explained. “Some are a bit older. We’re a small club who enjoy playing sport on a Saturday.

“We don’t train because we’ve nearly all got children. We play if we can but if someone can’t play there’s no pressure.”

Niki, a winger turned midfielder turned winger again, will always pull on the claret and blue of Shipton whenever she can and admits she still gets a buzz out of playing the game after all these years.

“I enjoy it because it is a de-stresser,” she laughed. “If you’ve had a bad week at work or the children have been playing up, you can go out and smash the hell out of a hockey ball.”

And while it’s easy to see why that might work, there is much more to hockey than just smashing the ball as hard as you can. So where did Niki learn all the tricks and flicks that make up the sport of hockey?

“We had a very good team at Westwoods,” she said, “and a very good teacher, her name was Mrs Chapman.

“We used to train on a pitch with a 45-degree slope left to right and for that first year we weren’t allowed to play any hockey matches, we were only allowed to do skills.

“My skills such as they are, come from that first year. I still run around a lot and I like to think I allow people to enjoy their hockey because I’m very supportive on the pitch. I have inherited the right to shout at the youngsters to run around, as a right of passage!”

Niki believes that Severn Division Two is the right standard for the one-team club. They’ve got 26 signed on, including Niki’s sister Pip Johnson who used to play for Gloucester, but Niki admitted, “We’d need to train to play at a higher level.”

Niki would love to see some new players sign on and anyone who does join this friendly club in the next few weeks or months would have the benefit of playing alongside Niki for some time to come.

“Pauline Benbow played for the club until she was 60,” said Niki. “Her daughter Kelly plays for us now and Pauline’s told me that I’ve got to keep playing for as long as she did.

“Pauline was never one to let you slack on the pitch and I would forever hear her shouting at me to get back or run forward.”

And it would certainly come as no surprise to anyone at the club if Niki matched or even surpassed Pauline’s achievement some time in the mid-2020s.