They had broomsticks and balls, hula hoops as goals, no uniforms and ‘‘no idea’’, recalls Katherine Hunter, 25, a personal trainer who was dragged along by a friend.

A Channel Nine cameraman expecting an action-packed training session soon fled.

‘‘The organiser said, ‘brooms up’ [start the game] and we stood around going, ‘what do we do’?’’ Ms Hunter said.

Ms Hunter said if you told her she would be still playing quidditch in 2014, ‘‘I would have said ‘you’re insane’.’’

Even crazier, Ms Hunter became one of six Victorians in a national team that won a silver medal, beating five other countries but losing to the US at the Global Games on July 19.

Unlike our mainstream sports teams, Australia’s quidditch Drop Bears, nicknamed after the mythical vicious Australian marsupial, paid their own way to the tournament, near Vancouver, Canada – in Ms Hunter’s case it was $4000.

The Victorian Quidditch Association now has 130 players in seven teams and on August 9 at Fawkner Park, South Yarra, launches its third round robin season, the Easton Shield.

Assocation vice-president GenGibson describes quidditch as a cross between rugby, dodgeball and hide-and-seek.

Each team has up to seven players on the pitch, each holding a broom between their legs.

There is a keeper (goalkeeper), and three chasers who throw the main ball, a partially deflated volleyball called a quaffle, to score goals (each worth 10 points) through one of three hoops at each end of the pitch.

There are two beaters, whose role is to throw dodgeballs called ‘bludgers’ at the other team. Players hit by a bludger have to run to the goal line and back before re-entering the play.

The seventh player is the seeker whose role it is to catch the 'Snitch', who doesn’t belong to either team. In the Harry Potter books, the Snitch is a small, fast moving golden ball with wings, and when you catch it, you get 180 points and it ends the game.

In the muggles version, a tennis ball in a pouch is attached by velcro to the Snitch’s shorts. The team that rips it off the shorts gets 30 points, and it’s only then that the game ends.

The pitch has no boundaries, so games can go for up to one hour. If the Snitch has vanished into the wilds of Fawkner Park, the referee can decree they can only use one arm, or stay within certain boundaries.

‘‘Eventually they get tired and slow down a bit,’’ says Ms Gibson.

Ms Hunter, a chaser, says once you get over the ‘‘stigma’’ of broomsticks and other weird bits, it’s ‘‘a high contact, very high intensity sport and it's really, really fun. There’s a really good community of people around it so you get to meet lots of people that maybe I wouldn’t have met normally".

Connor Saunders, 20, met his girlfriend, Amy Miller, the captain of his Bundoora-based team, the Northern Direwolves, through quidditch.

A nuclear science student, he chose the sport ‘‘because it’s not as hard-core serious’’ as others and after a hard game, ‘‘everyone hangs out and has a laugh’’.

Emma Morris, 24, a debt collector who had not played sport since she was 12, has travelled Australia as a player and is now an international referee.

‘‘I used to not really do a lot, at home reading or watching movies, and now I come to quidditch every week. I travel the world for quidditch and it’s just crazy.’’

Watch videos of quidditch at www.quidditchvictoria.com