A football team has pleaded to yobs to “think again” after club officials discovered their pitch had been vandalised.
Monifieth Athletic FC coaches found dog muck “deliberately” smeared into the portable goals and their pitch torn up with scrambler bike tyre marks left behind.
The club, which run teams across a number of age groups, said this “wasn’t the first time” they arrived to find scenes like this at Riverview Park in recent times.
James Harle, club secretary, said it was the “last thing” players or officials wanted to see after a challenging year for local sports teams as a result of Covid-19.
He added: “Thankfully when club members came down on Sunday and saw the extent of this mindless vandalism we were able to still let games go ahead.
“Two pitches have been damaged, one 11-a-side pitch and one seven-a-side pitch. The tyre marks could have been caused by one or two bikes, its hard to tell.
“There was an overnight frost and the ground is quite soft which has meant the tyre marks haven’t rutted in too badly.
“I’d like to appeal to these people to ask them to ‘think again’ and try to appeal to their better nature to stop doing this.
“I wouldn’t say incidents like this are a common occurrence but we have had our share of problems.
“This is the second time to our knowledge that someone appears to have smeared dog waste into the goals.
“We had a issues with cars in the past coming onto the pitch but we were able to install wooden posts to deter this from happening again.
“Unfortunately there is nothing we can really do to stop folk coming onto the pitch with bikes.
“Like I said earlier we can only hope we can appeal to these people’s better nature and ask them to think again before coming onto the pitch with these bikes.”
The club uploaded pictures of the damage to its Facebook page and parents have been quick to condemn the lout.
Mr Harle added: “Covid-19 has had such an impact on local sports, parents have been saying to us how great it is to have the kids back in a routine of having football.
“To have a mindless few potentially causing games to be cancelled with these actions just presents parents, players and official with an unnecessary headache that no one wants.”
This article originally appeared on the Evening Telegraph website. For more information, read about our new combined website.
