When Sue Wainwright founded Hucclecote Netball Club 40-odd years ago she could never have dreamed how big they would become.

Fast forward from those days in the late 1970s when the sophisticated ladies of the day were wearing leisure suits, jump suits and the like, and the club are the biggest netball concern in the south west and have a team competing on the national stage.

“Yes, it is incredible,” said Sue, now 64 and one of the founder members all those years ago.

So how did it all start?

“There was a group of us – all ex-Hucclecote School pupils,” explained Sue. “We used to watch Hucclecote play rugby on Saturday afternoons – my husband Tony founded Hucclecote Rugby Club.

“We were getting fed up being rugby widows so we said, ‘Why don’t we form our own netball club?’”

It was to be one of the best things they ever did and although Sue is the only founder member still involved with the club, they can all look back with pride at what they started four decades ago.

Sue, of course, does the work of several people with her jobs these days including chair, coach, team manager and “anything else that needs doing”.

“The club are very close to my heart,” she said. “It was my idea so the club are very important to me. In those days I was a sports teacher at Churchdown School and I’m so pleased we managed to get the club off the ground.”

Initially the club were very much a local side.

“We just had the one team to start with,” recalls Sue. “We used to train and play at what was then Brockworth School. We were unrecognisable then compared to where we are today, but each year we grew and grew, and within five or six years we had four teams competing in the Gloucestershire League.”

That was pretty impressive, of course, but that was just the start. By now Gilly Salter had come on board and in Gilly, Sue found a soulmate who was just as committed as herself to spreading the netball word to anyone who would listen.

“The biggest change at the club occurred when we started running junior workshops in the school holidays,” said Sue. “They were netball camps for 11 to 16 years olds and it was a joint venture by myself and Gilly in the late 80s and early 90s.”

The youngsters loved it and of course it wasn’t just them who benefited, because Hucclecote Netball Club were suddenly the place to be for anyone wanting to play the sport.

“We then catered for the primary age group at the workshops,” said Sue. “What that did was ensure the club had a steady stream of young players joining the club, providing our future seniors.”

And as with any successful venture you can never accuse those at the top of wanting to stand still, so this season the club have launched a new initiative.

“It’s netball for minis,” said Sue. “It’s 45-minute sessions on a Friday evening for four to eight year olds. It’s just started and we’re getting about 20 youngsters at the moment.

“We teach them the fundamental skills of ball games – running, jumping, catching and throwing – and it runs alongside our primary school section.”

So successful are the club that they now have in excess of 200 members and are running teams at pretty much every level.

“We’ve got a team in the national premier league, two teams in the regional leagues and three teams in the Gloucestershire League,” said Sue. “Then we’ve got two teams at under-16s, 14s, 13s, 12s and 11s.”

The bigger the club the more organisation that is required of course, and working out who plays where and when – not to mention training – is enough to give anyone a headache.

Put simply, the club train at Cheltenham College on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays and the national team and the two regional teams play their home games at Cheltenham College and Chosen Hill School. The Gloucestershire League teams play their matches at the leisure centre in Cheltenham while the juniors play their matches at Bentham.

It’s no wonder Sue says the club are the “biggest and best” in the south west.

It’s no idle boast either, because last year the club won the National Club of the Year award at the Goalden Globes Awards organised by England Netball.

“It was for everything we do, not just our performances on the court,” said Sue. “It was for our youth development, our coaching, the way we behave on court. And what made it even more special was that it was presented to us by Tracey Neville, who used to play for us many years ago.”

Neville, the sister of celebrated former Manchester United and England footballers Gary and Phil, is just one of several players to have played for the club and gone on to play for their countries.

Others include Geva Mentor and Ama Agbeze, while Sam Cook, a former England Under-21 player, has just returned to the club to play in the national league and is also coaching the University of Gloucestershire 1st and 2nd teams.

It’s a pretty impressive roll of honour and the future looks bright for the club too.

“We’ve won the national under-19s and we usually get to the national finals with under-16s,” said Sue. “And we’ve finished in the top 10 in recent years.”

About three-quarters of the club’s membership is now under 18 and Sue admits the club’s philosophy has had to change over the years.

“Originally we were just a local community club,” she said. “But because of our on-court excellence and reputation we had to change our mindset which means these days we can’t cater for everyone. We are very much a performance related junior club, and provide a very good pathway for players to go into the county league and the regional leagues and maybe even higher.”

Sue will be keeping an even closer eye than usual on one particular youngster who is just starting out on that pathway and that’s her granddaughter, Charlotte Brayshaw.

She’s in the primary school section and is, says nanny, “a budding shooter”.

It will be some time before Charlotte starts knocking on the door of the club’s senior teams, of course, but you can be sure that Sue will be supporting her every step of the way along her netball journey.

Even though Sue is now well into her seventh decade, her enthusiasm for the sport remains as strong as ever.

“They’ll probably have to carry me off court in a box,” she laughed.

And of the future for Hucclecote Netball Club, she added: “I want to leave a legacy. I want to leave a strong club with strong people who are able to carry on the success. We’ve got a good core of people who do a lot of work behind the scenes.

“We’ve got the ninth best membership in the country and I want the club to continue to be the best in the area and one of the best in the country.”