History of the Club

Kay Morrison, a local resident, founded Tongham Netball Club in 1964 as she felt there was a need for a club in the village for the local youth and as a consequence Tongham Netball Club was formed. At the start there were only 12 players with an age range of 15 to 20. The main opposition was the army plus a few scattered local teams.

The first team began playing matches at Tongham Junior School although the playground was not large enough for a full sized court. Because of this it was decided to fund raise to provide a tarmac facility and together with a grant from the local council eventually a full size court was built in the recreation ground in Tongham. During the summer, a regular annual tournament was held.

Original club members, Maggie Smith, Val Cooper and Jan Thompson are still with the club today and remember the times when the only way to get to a match was to catch a bus, hitch hike or in later years cram all seven players into Maggie's little car.

Sadly, Kay has now passed away, but she would be very proud of the success we have achieved. We recently celebrated our 40th anniversary... quite an achievement... and we're looking forward to another 40!

The kit has also changed over the years initially white skirts and blue shirts were worn with a navy blue tracksuit – these have now evolved to the green, yellow and black kit that we have today.

Tongham Netball Club has come a long way from its humble beginnings and has been involved in lots of memorable events. The first team qualified for the regular Wembley event on many occasions and have been winners and runners up. The club has been fortunate to have members represent National, Regional and County sides on a regular basis and a welsh National Player. Back in 1975 Maggie, Val, Jan and Pam linked with Berkshire players to represent Bracknell in the BBC programme "Sportstown". An exciting match ensued with a draw 10-10 against a team from Milton Keynes. It was a very rare occurrence at the time for netball to be televised! Tongham are also very lucky to have Bill Alexander, a former International Umpire and England Netball Board member within the club Bill is also President of Hampshire and his wife Carol is Chair of Hampshire Netball Association and both are active supporter of the club.

In 2006, after some tense play-off games, Tongham Tornadoes were successful in securing a place in the National Premier League, where only the top 20 clubs in England take part.

During 2007, the team featured every day for a week on the Edith Bowman show on Radio 1, with members of the club selecting their favourite songs and talking about netball.

In 2008, the Tornadoes secured 3rd place in Premier League Div 2, and attended the Div 1 Play-offs in Loughborough in May. Unfortunately, we did not make it into Div 1 this time, but are confident that this WILL happen one day!

In 2009 Tongham Tornadoes were unfortunately relegated from the Premier League after a really hard-fought weekend in Sheffield at the Division 2 Play-offs. They will now play in Division 1 of the South Region league. The Club, however, is determined to make it back into the National Premier league.