Liz Robertson, Croydon High School's much loved and brilliantly successful netball coach and teacher, is moving on to pastures new - TOM GEOGHEGAN reports.

Weeks after England won the football World Cup, a 20-year-old hockey player started work as a netball coach at Croydon High School taking on a sport she had never previously taught or loved.

Thirty-five years later, having departed the school last Friday, it is clear that Liz Robertson has mastered teaching the sport. She has guided 65 school teams to the national finals.

Which includes a few more trophies than England have won at football during that time period.

The popular sports teacher's love affair with the school on Old Farleigh Road in Selsdon has ended so that she can turn her attention to running netball playing and coaching courses.

Speaking on the eve of her departure, she predicted it would be a great wrench. She said: “It's been an emotional week very, very difficult and I will not fully realise the difficulty until I go.

“The children have given me an enormous amount of pleasure. They are brilliant girls and it's a brilliant school.

“I've made a lot of friends and there is very supportive and happy staff here. But it's very hard work and I want to work less hard.”

A serious hand injury sustained playing rounders two years ago forced Liz to work part-time. This step back from her work prompted her decision to drop her pace of life down a gear.

She added: “The netballers were very disappointed, devastated, some in floods of tears. A sports teacher sees pupils at their most relaxed and the girls regard you as a bit of a mate, as someone they can talk to if they want to.”

One former pupil will have a special reason for remembering Liz with fondness in the 1980s she rescued a drowning girl who'd fallen into the swimming pool.

An indication of her popularity is that 180 girls were

expected at her farewell party in Surrey on Saturday.

Liz, who lives in Upper Norwood, started teaching at the school on very the first day it moved to its present site from Wellesley Road in Croydon town centre.

There is no greater witness, therefore, to the monumental changes and advances Croydon High has seen since the 60s.

There are many more buildings on the site now to provide specialist departments and hi-tech sport and leisure facilities.

Liz has been honoured twice by the All-England Netball Association in the last two years once for 30 continuous years of bringing teams to the national finals, and again for fair play.

Although proud of her teams' netballing success, Liz is keen to emphasise that competition while encouraged at Croydon High is not the PE department's foremost concern.

“The participation of the girls in this school in sport is the number one aim of the PE department and anything else is a bonus. We never have to find girls escaped to the toilets, because they love the sport.”

She said that the school is blessed with such a wide range of sport facilities encompassing everything from ballroom dancing to swimming and volleyball that most girls find an activity that they can practise with gusto.

Although the four PE teachers at the school do specialise, Liz has demonstrated her teaching skills in a wide range of activities, including cooking, since originally starting there as a netball and tennis coach.

She says that single-sex schools give girls a huge sporting advantage compared to mixed ones.

“When they go to university, however, they tell me that they cannot get funding, or even the minibus, because the men get them. That is horrendous and that's when they notice how lucky they were here.”

Head teacher Lorna Ogilvie was full of praise for her joint longest-serving member of staff.

She said: “Liz is an exceptional coach with an unrivalled record in netball.

“She will be much missed by staff and pupils, who had such a good relationship with her.”