How to Run a Netball Club

1. Get the basics right before you open the doors

Netball is one of the most-played team sports among women and girls in the UK, and it travels well into mixed and walking variants too. The catch for an organiser is that it's a team game — you can't run a session with three people who happened to turn up. Seven a side means you need bodies, and a plan for when those bodies cancel on the morning of a match.

Court and venue

A full netball court is 30.5m by 15.25m, divided into three thirds, with a 4.9m semicircle (the shooting circle) at each end and a 3.05m-high post topped by a 380mm ring. In the UK that almost always means an indoor sports hall at a leisure centre, school or college, or an outdoor macadam court at a netball centre. Posts are usually the venue's — confirm they're available and not locked in a store — and check the run-off behind the goal line, because a defender stepping back shouldn't meet a wall.

Lock in a recurring slot before anything else. A fixed "Wednesday 7–9pm" does more for retention than any flyer, and most leagues and social ladders are built around the same night each week. Negotiate a block-booking discount and ask whether you can store posts, bibs and a first-aid kit on-site — lugging it all in your boot every week wears thin fast.

Equipment

You need: at least two full sets of bibs in contrasting colours (GS, GA, WA, C, WD, GD, GK — buy spares, they vanish), match balls (size 5 for adults, size 4 for younger juniors), a whistle, a pump and a first-aid kit. The bibs matter more than they sound: positions are everything in netball, and a player who can't find a WA bib spends the first five minutes unsure where they're allowed to go. A second contrasting set also lets you split into balanced teams instantly.

Open play vs structured format

Decide whether you're running a social / back-to-back night (turn up, get put into a team, rotate through short games — low commitment, very welcoming) or a structured league (fixed teams, a fixture list, standings over a season). Most thriving clubs run a social session as the front door to build numbers, then layer a league or internal ladder on top once they know the regulars. Don't try to be both on the same night — players hate not knowing whether they're in a fixed team or being shuffled.

2. Build a squad that turns up

Because netball needs whole teams, your real target isn't "members" in the abstract — it's depth. You want enough players on the roster that two cancellations on a Wednesday afternoon don't sink the session, so aim to over-recruit early.

Where to recruit

• Local Facebook groups — town pages and "[town] netball" groups convert well, especially in late summer before the autumn season. A photo, "back-to-back netball Wednesday 7pm, £6, all positions welcome, bibs provided", and you'll get replies the same day.
• England Netball's club finder — affiliating gets your club listed on the national governing body's directory, which catches the steady stream of people searching "netball near me" or returning to the game after school.
• Schools, colleges and workplaces — netball has a huge school playing base, so leavers are a natural recruitment pool. Many workplaces also run or want a team for corporate leagues.
• Walking netball and Back to Netball sessions — these England Netball schemes bring in returners and over-50s; an adult club that welcomes graduates from them taps a warm, motivated audience.

Make joining painless

The fastest way to lose an interested player is to make them email you, wait for a reply, and fill in a paper form at the door. The fastest way to convert them is a single link or QR code that adds them to the roster, shows the next session and lets them flag their preferred positions. In ClubLono every club gets a join QR code and a public page (something like clublono.com/c/your-club): players scan it, enter their name, and they're on the roster — no email chain, no spreadsheet. And when you can see at a glance you've got two shooters and only one keeper for Wednesday, you can recruit to the gap before it bites.

3. Decide how you'll collect subs

There are three models worth considering, and you can mix them.

Pay-per-session

Players pay £5–£8 each time. Pros: fair for irregular attendees, easy for one-off guests filling a position. Cons: jagged cash flow, and chasing money on the night while you're also trying to umpire is the most thankless job in club running.

Monthly or seasonal subs

A fixed monthly fee, or a one-off season sub, covering all sessions. Pros: smooth, predictable income, and it nudges people to commit to a regular team — exactly what netball needs. Cons: it doesn't suit sporadic players, who'll feel they're overpaying, and a one-off season sub is a big ask for someone still deciding whether they're in.

Hybrid (recommended for most clubs)

A discounted season or monthly sub for the committed squad, plus a guest rate for one-off players who come to fill a position. Best of both worlds — and because netball constantly needs cover, a guest rate is essential: it means you can text "anyone know a GK for Wednesday?" and the stand-in can pay in two taps without you doing maths on the night.

What to charge

Work backwards from your venue hire. Divide the hire cost by a realistic attendance number, add a little for balls, league entry and umpire costs, and round to a number people can pay quickly. Charging £6 instead of £5.75 saves you twenty minutes of awkward maths every week, and nobody has ever quit a club over twenty-five pence.

4. Run a session that feels fair

This is where a netball club either grows by word of mouth or quietly stalls. Players forgive a slightly pricey session or a squeaky floor. They do not forgive standing on the sideline in a GK bib for forty minutes while the same shooters get every minute on court.

The squad list, not a singles queue

Netball isn't a queue of individuals — it's about who's available and which positions they cover. Before the session you want a clear list of who's coming and where they can play, so you can build two even sevens (or three if you're rotating). ClubLono's roster shows confirmed attendees ahead of time, so you spot that you're a centre short and sort it on Monday, not at 6:55pm.

Building balanced teams

Fair team-building is the single biggest factor in retention — a night where one team wins every game 30–8 is no fun for either side. Spread your strongest players and your shooters across teams, and put newer players alongside experienced ones. ClubLono carries a built-in player rating (we call it HLR) that updates as results come in, so over a few weeks you can balance squads on more than gut feel.

Scoring and format — the timed game

Netball is scored on goals over a fixed time, not a race to a target — which is why ClubLono runs netball in its timed scoring mode. A full match is four quarters of 15 minutes; a social back-to-back night runs much shorter games — two halves of seven or ten minutes, or a single timed period — so you can rotate several fixtures through one slot. Each goal from inside the shooting circle is worth one, and the team with more goals at the buzzer wins. ClubLono runs the clock, records the goals and works out who won so you can umpire instead of refereeing a spreadsheet.

Rotation and the pool-then-playoff format

For a social night or a one-day tournament, ClubLono's recommended format for netball is pool play into a playoff: teams play a short round of timed games within a pool so everyone gets plenty of court time, then the standings decide the knockout — top two into a final, the rest into placing games. It's the format that keeps the most people playing the longest, which is exactly what you want when newcomers are deciding whether to come back. Set the rotation explicitly before you start so nobody's left guessing when they're on.

5. Keep people coming back

Retention is cheaper than recruitment, in clubs as in everything else — and in a team sport, every regular you keep is one less position you're scrambling to fill on a Wednesday morning.

Communicate in one place

If availability lives in a WhatsApp group, cancellations in a Facebook event and team selection in your head, players miss things and you field a lopsided team. Pick one channel for everything. ClubLono includes a members-only club chat with photos and reactions — every player on the roster is automatically in it, and booked players get a thread for their specific session, so "we still need a GA for tonight" reaches the people coming, not all 60 members at once.

Schedule sessions ahead

"Same time every week" is the floor. Better is a published calendar showing the next 4–8 weeks, including the weeks you're not running because the hall is booked or it's a league bye. ClubLono lets you publish a recurring session calendar with capacity limits, and members get a push notification when a session opens. Capacity limits matter in netball: you want enough for two or three teams, not fourteen for one court and a sideline of spectators.

Add a competitive layer

Once you have a committed squad, entering a local league or running an internal ladder gives people something to play for — the difference between "a thing I sometimes do" and "my team". Keep the social back-to-back night as the front door, and let the competitive side sit alongside it for those who want it.

6. Stay legal and safe

The dull but necessary section — most of it is well covered by your national governing body.

Insurance

Public liability insurance is strongly recommended for any club running sessions in a hired venue, and many venues require it as a condition of booking. Affiliating to England Netball (or Netball Scotland, Welsh Netball or Netball Northern Ireland) typically includes a club and member insurance package — read what's actually covered, because affiliation cover is usually a floor, and league entry often requires affiliation anyway.

Safeguarding

Netball has a large junior playing base, so if you run sessions for under-18s you need a designated safeguarding lead, DBS-checked coaches and umpires, and a written policy. Use England Netball's safeguarding templates and training rather than writing one from scratch.

Data protection (UK GDPR)

The moment you store members' names, emails or phone numbers you're a data controller. In practice: have a short, plain-English privacy notice, don't share personal data without consent, and let members delete their account on request. With ClubLono this is handled at the platform level and members can delete their own account from in-app settings.

Money handling

If you take more than a trivial amount in subs and match fees, open a separate bank account for the club. Mixing club money with your personal current account is the fastest route to a difficult AGM — and netball clubs, with season subs and league entry fees flowing through, hit that "not trivial" threshold quickly.

7. Grow without burning out

Most volunteer-run clubs don't collapse from a lack of members — they collapse because the one person doing the admin, the team selection and the umpiring gets tired and quits. In netball, where someone chases availability for seven positions every week, that burnout arrives faster than you'd expect. The founder's real job is to remove themselves as the bottleneck.

• Spread the load. Train two or three deputy organisers and captains who can set out posts, take attendance, build teams and lock up when you're away. Share the umpiring rota too — one person whistling every game burns out fastest.
• Automate the boring stuff. Availability requests, subs chasing, session reminders, the timed scoring, refunds on a cancelled night — all of it can be a tool's job. If it lives only in your head, it falls over the moment you're on holiday.
• Write things down. A one-page "how this club runs" doc — venue contact, post storage, payment login, league secretary's number, where the spare bibs are — protects everyone if you're suddenly unavailable.

8. The tools that actually save time

You can run a small netball club on a spreadsheet, a WhatsApp group and a bag of bibs. Plenty do. It works at one team, creaks at two, and becomes a part-time unpaid job once you're juggling a squad, a fixture list and a weekly availability scramble.

Dedicated club software collapses several tools into one and stops you being the bottleneck:

• The roster becomes self-serve via a QR code, with positions visible at a glance.
• Subs and match fees stop being chased and start being collected automatically via Stripe, straight to your club bank account.
• Attendance and availability become a confirmed list you can build teams from, not a WhatsApp headcount.
• Messages live in one members-only chat instead of scattered across WhatsApp and Facebook.
• Sessions and scoring become a published calendar with capacity limits, a timed match clock, automatic standings and automatic refunds when you cancel.

ClubLono is free for a single club with no time limit and no feature cliff — roster, scheduling, the timed match clock, pool-into-playoff format, chat, capacity and refunds all work on the free tier. On paid sessions, the host receives the payment less Stripe's 1.5% + 20p and a 5% ClubLono platform fee. The Premium tier (£19.99/month or £199.99/year, with a 14-day free trial on either) drops that platform fee to 1% and unlocks multi-club hosting, leagues, kiosk mode, cross-club stats and DUPR export. ClubLono never holds members' funds — money goes straight to the host's bank account via Stripe, and cancelled paid sessions auto-refund every booked player. There is no per-player fee. It's built for exactly the club this guide describes: a netball squad that would rather be on court than buried in spreadsheets.