THE teenage son of an Australian netball star is being labelled a hero after confronting a woman armed with a baseball bat to protect his older sister and the family car at their Bilambil Heights home.

Clay Ferruccio, the 12-year-old son of retired netball Hall of Famer Nicole Cusack, showed courage to challenge the home invader, demanding she leave when she began waving her bat aggressively.

The woman arrived unexpectedly at the door late one afternoon recently and was acting strangely, asking for Clay and his sister to call police.

When her attempts to get inside the house failed, she found her way into the family car in the driveway.

Clay's mum was out of the country on netball coaching duties and his dad, Tony, was down the road with one of his other sisters, shopping.

"I had a trolley full of groceries and I got this call from my middle girl saying: 'Look, there's a lady at the door with a baseball bat, she wants us to call the police',” Mr Ferruccio said.

"They shut the door on her, looked out the window and she's trying to get in the car, and Clay's gone out with his boxer shorts on... so I've left the shopping trolley in aisle four, run out and drove home.”

A neighbour came to help the teen ward off the woman before, in an unusual turn of events, she fled carting a wheelie bin.

Mr Ferruccio, who had remained on the phone to his daughter the whole time, spotted the intruder about 1km from the house and asked for his bin.

He would later, following the woman's arrest, pull the wheelie uphill and back to his house only to realise it wasn't his.

He said the act was out of character for his son and from a parent's point of view it was foolish.

But he still admired his bravery for trying to protect his sister and their family car.

Clay's grandmother went even further, saying her grandson should get a bravery award. She contacted the Tweed Daily following the incident to say she had been scared and unable to sleep but thought he deserved recognition; that he was a little hero.