The senior side of St Ninian’s Badminton Club is closing after at least 90 years of training some of the island’s top players.

The Douglas-based club has been running since at least 1932 and produced multiple Commonwealth Games participants including Jessica Li, who reached the last 16 for the Isle of Man at this year’s event, and Josh Green, who also spent time as a GB player.

Junior club secretary Sue Domingo, whose grandfather Stanley Kelly was one of the founding members, said: ‘I’m really gutted and it’s been running for so long so it’s a shame for it to end but we’ve been thinking about closing for about three years.’

Mrs Domingo said that the amount of work involved and a struggle to find those who can offer the time needed to help out, along with the lack of a secretary, have led to the decision to close.

However, the junior side of the club, which was started about 50 years ago by June Radcliffe and Tedda Caine, will be continuing its legacy of supporting many of the island’s best upcoming players.

One such player, who has been a member at the club for 49 years since the early days of those junior sessions, is Simon Fletcher. He spoke about the legacy of the club which is one of, if not the longest running clubs in the island and ‘has always been synonymous with badminton.’

He said: ‘I play every year and I’ve never missed a season in almost 50 years, it’s always been quite a friendly club.’

Despite the closure of the club, he says the Manx badminton community is still healthy on the island.

‘The team has done reasonably well at the island games the last few years, Jess did well this year at the Commonwealth and we’ve got people like Martin Chung who is going to be a good player.’

The junior sessions of the club will still be running every Sunday from 5pm to 6pm.