Volunteers at a grassroots football club in Leicestershire said they are “devastated” at having to call off matches after two pitches were vandalised.<\/p>\n
A vehicle was driven onto the youth playing area at Whetstone Athletic just after 15:00 GMT on Friday, leaving deep muddy ruts on the grass.<\/p>\n
Organisers said dozens of children were left disappointed after seven teams were unable to play matches on the pitches in Lutterworth Road over the weekend.<\/p>\n
An online appeal has been launched to help pay for repairs at club, seeking to raise \u00a310,000 for repairs and additional security.<\/p>\n
Leicestershire Police said it was investigating a report of criminal damage that was made to the force on Saturday. <\/p>\n
The club said CCTV showed the vehicle, an orange, pick-up style van with ladders on the roof, being taken onto the grass and then had its wheels spun to cause further damage.<\/p>\n
“We are gutted,” said club secretary Kirk Nicol. “There is a lot of work that goes into these pitches and it is from unpaid volunteers.<\/p>\n
“We have probably some of the best grass pitches in the county and to see them all churned up with tyre tracks is a bitter pill to swallow.<\/p>\n
“You put all that work in and it is wiped out within the space of two minutes – it is really upsetting.”<\/p>\n
The appeal has been launched to repair the pitches and install secure fencing to prevent vehicles from accessing the pitches and to protect them from future damage, organisers said.<\/p>\n
In a statement on social media, the club added: “This means that seven of our teams will be unable to play, and more than 100 children will miss out on the joy of football.<\/p>\n
“As a grassroots club run entirely by volunteers, incidents like this hit us hard.” <\/p>\n
A statement from Leicestershire Police said: “Officers are investigating a report of criminal damage to football pitches at a sports club in Lutterworth Road, Leicester.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Volunteers at a grassroots football club in Leicestershire said they are “devastated” at having to call off matches…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-409784","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}