I’m standing in the shadow of two 6ft-something members of the England netball team. A hard orange ball is hurtling towards my ribcage. This is going to be messy. One player has had time out after taking a ball in the face earlier in the game and another bears the remains of a black eye from a previous bruising encounter. It’s a far cry from the schoolyard japes of jolly girlish novels. Anyone for a nice game of footie?

Male readers will be chuckling at the idea that netball could ever be daunting. It’s all about short pleated skirts and pigtails, isn’t it? No, says England Netball, the game’s governing body, the sport has now grown up and deserves to be taken seriously.

Last week the England netball team flew to Auckland for the start of the world championships this weekend and with a realistic prospect of finishing in the medals. A few days earlier I had been persuaded to take part in one of the final training sessions. And with the sport keen to ditch its old-fashioned, prissy image I wasn’t about to be given an easy ride.

“You’re in for a shock,” warned Marg Caldow, England coach and a former member of the Australian netball team, where the sport has long attracted more funding.

“Some people still see it as a schoolgirl sport, as if it is a little ladies’ thing, and it’s not. It is a physically testing game, it can get extremely rough and it is extremely skilful, played by great athletes . . . not to mention good-looking young women in sexy outfits.”

So no qualms about playing the beach volleyball card in the pursuit of a wider audience then? “Well not quite,” she laughs. “We don’t want to be playing in G-strings. I don’t think even we could cope with that.” There are seven girls here tonight. For the warm-up exercise I’ve been paired with a young woman who is clearly no stranger to the bench press and is firing the ball at me with all the force of her sizeable biceps.

The team is roughly split between those players who are stupidly tall and leggy and those who are stupidly strong and speedy. I haven’t played the game since school, have a stinking cold and could be described as borderline dyspraxic. Running I can handle, combine it with catching a fast-moving rubbery object that is threatening to take my fingers out, and I’m Frank Spencer.

Amanda Newton, 30, team captain, who has been on the squad for 10 years, puts me through my paces.

“The sport is much more serious than when I started,” she says. “When we won bronze at the 1998 Commonwealth Games people realised we could actually beat someone and they began to take an interest.”

Newton, her ankles strapped up to protect against injury, runs through the rules of the training exercise, then I’m charging up and down the court, passing the ball and praying I won’t drop it. I run as fast as I can, but I’ve no hope of getting possession when Sonia Mkoloma, 28, who is more than 6ft tall and 90% legs, is haring towards me and leaping several feet into the air for the catch. “Marg insists we wear the red England kit for the matches,” she confides later. “She thinks it makes us look fierce.” At full pelt, Mkoloma does not need any assistance on that front.

Earlier this year the England team beat New Zealand for the first time in 32 years, and recently came close to defeating Australia. If all goes to plan, they’ll meet the Aussie team in the world championship semi-finals this week. Win that match and they’ll be in sight of a gold medal. Still, you’ll struggle to find anyone who knows the championships are under way, never mind that we have a potentially world-beating team. Blame the boys.

“In England you notice how little women’s sport is in the newspapers; it’s just football, football, football or it’s cricket,” says Caldow. “But men who dismiss netball should see a top-class match. It’s really fast and, although it’s a noncontact sport, the idea that everyone is playing a metre apart is ridiculous. It’s like any sport, two people going for the same ball are going to make contact with each other.”

Netball, played by teams of seven, has long suffered from the fact that it was conceived in the 19th century as a women’s alternative to basketball, which was tricky to play in the women’s outfits of the time. Now, 1m women play netball in the UK every week and there is even an unofficial England men’s team.

Inspired by its Antipodean rivals, England Netball has tried to raise the sport’s profile by creating a national women’s super league and attracting funds from the national lottery. Sky Sports shows netball on Thursday evenings and a recent match attracted more viewers than the rugby programme that preceded it.

But young women hoping to turn their playground netball skills into big bucks – as their male classmates turn kickabouts into Premier League millions – should forget it. A top-flight netball player will receive only a few thousand pounds a year and most combine their sport with studying or part-time work. They’re still expected to train every day during the season.

Fortunately, national pride remains the main motivating factor. “We don’t get paid,” says Jo Harten, 18, and 6ft 1in tall, from Harlow, Essex, who has just joined the team as goal shooter. “It’d be nice to be paid £1m a match but for me it’s about the pride of playing for my country.”

After 1½ hours of being smacked by the ball and beaten to every pass, I’m flagging. I sit out the final games and realise the girls were going easy on me. The pace has moved up several notches. Training sessions end with a muscle-relaxing ice bath (three times in and out until your goose pimples make you look like a plucked turkey). Tonight the girls are spared that torture and instead stretch on the sports hall floor. Still flushed but pretty pleased (I dropped the ball only three or four times, after all), I wonder if, with practice, I might have what it takes.

“So, could I make the team?” I ask breezily. After a long, crushing pause, Caldow replies. “First we need to improve your base fitness, then your ball skills, then your speed needs some work,” she smiles, “oh and your agility needs a bit of fine tuning.”

I guess that’s netball for “Don’t call us, we’ll call you”.

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