A book celebrating the 150th anniversary of what is probably the oldest sporting club in the island has been officially launched.

Douglas Rugby 1873 - 2022 has been a labour of love for former player and club archivist Tony Wilson-Spratt.

He has been working on the publication for the past three years and wrote in the region of 150,000 words to accompany the dozens of photographs, which date back to the very first images in the late 1880s.

Tony kept newspaper cuttings from his own playing days and an involvement with the club that spans a total of 46 years from 1976 to the present.

He has also spent long hours in the Manx Museum library searching through the extensive newspaper archives.

The end result is a factual and fascinating hard-backed book of 264-pages that provides a comprehensive history of a club that was founded in the year of the Great Depression in the United States midway through the reign of Queen Victoria.

‘I spent months at the museum collating information, but I admit it was a fascinating exercise’, said Tony, who is justly proud of the publication.

‘In the end I ran out of time, as in the latter stages I discovered a load more images and a lot of additional information, but I had to draw a line somewhere.

‘My aim was to get the book on sale by Christmas 2022 in advance of the 150th year.

At the rear of the book is an A-Z of players who have represented Douglas RUFC over a century-and-a-half, numbering somewhere in the region of 1,100.

He resisted the temptation to print several hundred copies of the book.

‘I didn’t want to be saddled with a load of unsold ones, so I decided to limit the print run with Bradleys/Mannin to just 150 copies.’

The foreword to the book was penned by the great Doddie Weir OBE last July, little more than four months before the Scottish international’s sad passing at the age of 52.