Yvonne Rhoden runs netball sessions at Highbury Fields

DROPPING their children off at netball club before school, a group of mothers joked with the coach that they wanted to have a go – so she set up an extra session just for them.

That was 10 years ago, and retired police detective and former England Netball coach Yvonne Rhoden still runs a weekly practice in Highbury Fields for many of the same women today.

“It’s an opportunity to just be them for the hour – away from being mum, away from the demands of work and parenting,” she told the Tribune.

“Some haven’t played since school and some have never touched a netball before. A lot of women step away from the game for a whole host of reasons – I was one of the crazy ones who just continued netball throughout my life.”

Ms Rhoden first played when she was seven.

Her parents were part of the Windrush generation, and her mother enrolled her in a netball after-school club as a way to connect with the other parents, who wouldn’t even speak to her at the school gates.

“I just fell in love with it,” said Ms Rhoden, who worked in the Met before her professional coaching days.

“It was another kind of love story as soon as I started doing it,” she said of policing.

“I guess it’s a parallel to sport – the sense of a team, of being part of something.”

She started as a constable in Hackney in the early 1980s, and later moved to Stoke Newington.

“It was the trifecta – a woman, a black woman, in the police,” said Ms Rhoden.

“By the time I joined, the Brixton riots and the Broadwater Farm riot had happened. It was often confron­tational, going out on the street and listening to people’s woes. Some would say I was a traitor, others would be really encouraging.

“Some of those tensions still remain today, so the job’s not done.”

In spite of her detractors within and outside the Met, Ms Rhoden never doubted her place there.

“I very much believed in the mission of making it better for other people, creating visibility,” she added.

“There was more than one occasion where I had to hold my own [with colleagues], but I was an East End girl from a Jamaican background. We don’t scare easily. I wasn’t one to back down and I had a strong influence from my mum, who was the matriarch of our family. She always gave me the encourage­ment and the courage to know that what I was doing was right and to silence those dissenting voices by doing my job and doing it well.”

Yvonne Rhoden was awarded an MBE in 2008

Formidable women run in the family – Ms Rhoden’s aunt, Valda James, was the first black woman elected to Islington Council and the borough’s first black mayor.

After her years on the beat, Ms Rhoden hung up her uniform to become a detective specialising in cases of violence against women and girls, including forced marriage and “honour” crimes.

In 2008, she was awarded an MBE for her services.

“Anyone will tell you that work is not for the faint-hearted,” she said.

“We know conviction rates are low, it’s very difficult, but I felt a real passion for it. That focus on women and girls has always been my passion – whether it’s through sport and netball or in my professional life.”

Retiring in 2012 after 30 years in the Met, Ms Rhoden now coaches both juniors and adults, including a team called Netball Noir that regularly sees up to 100 women of colour showing up for a session.

“Netball has been criticised as a bit cliquey, a very white space,” she said.

“But when you create the right space for women, particularly black women, they will come.”

On Friday mornings in Highbury Fields, some of the women who once dropped their children off at breakfast club bring their now teenage daughters to join in the game.

“We have women from all walks of life,” said Ms Rhoden.“Homemakers, entrepreneurs, journalists, doctors, community activists – they all add to that sense of community, of sisterhood in the group.”

Newcomers are welcome at netball in Highbury Fields on Fridays at 9am. One session is £6 and no booking required.