'It's been a long time coming' - Douglas & District return home to Noble's Park

Douglas and District FC returned to their spiritual home at Noble's Park on Saturday after spending several seasons away.

The football club has had something of a nomadic existence over the last few years, most recently playing their home games on Groves Road in Pulrose for the past three seasons.

Prior to that, D&D had played at the Bowl for a short stint, having previously called Noble's Park home between 2010 and 2022.

Part of the reason for the ambitious move back to Noble’s Park was the lack of permanent training facilities in Pulrose, with the team changing in a portable cabin and away teams in the old police station.

Now though, the club have worked hard behind the scenes to make Noble's Park its permanent home and the ground has undertaken significant changes.

Working alongside Douglas City Council, D&D have worked to fund a project to level and improve the pitch which has in the past been criticised for its slope and relatively small size.

Efforts have also taken place to improve the changing rooms inside the Noble's Park Pavilion, complete with Douglas and District insignia while paying homage to teams of the past in the club's 30-year history.

And, despite the recent hot weather and subsequent droughts, that work all came to fruition at the weekend as the club held its first match in several years at the venue.

D&D's first team went up against the newly-merged Gymns and Douglas Athletic side in Ardern and Druggan Division Two on Saturday afternoon and, while it was the away side that triumphed 1-6, the future is looking bright for the hosts.

Speaking after the match, club secretary Dave Mathieson spoke of the return home, saying: 'It's a big, big relief. It's been a long time coming and a lot of effort by a lot of people.

'If you trace it back to the original discussion about getting the pitch redeveloped and changed, and then personalising the change rooms etc, it goes back as far as 10 years - obviously a lot happens in 10 years and a lot of people move on.

'But there's been a lot of people involved in that whole process that have put a lot of effort in - even up to up to last night [Friday] we had people in the changing rooms after 9pm putting up old squad photos getting everything looking nice, ready for today.

'At various points over the past decade, I didn't know if we'd ever actually get to the point when we could say we've got a place where we can stick our badge and our club name up and call it our own.

'The full expectation from Douglas City Council was it will be ready by summer 2027. They said there was a chance it could be ready for this season but not to get our hopes up.

'Credit to the council for getting the work done - we are extremely grateful to them for it. They needed an extra week to get some more work done, so we played both our games at Douglas Royal last week, so we really appreciated that from Royals.

The pitch is done, it's bright green and 35% bigger. We can play at Noble's Park every week and we've got various teams throughout the club who will be using the pitch as well.

'But we're here now, so we need to start from there and move on. I'm extremely happy. Hopefully, we can use this as a bit of a springboard.'

- The full, wide-ranging interview with Dave Mathieson will be available on www.iomtoday.co.im shortly.