Eccles RFC were left devastated after vandalists destroyed their 3G pitch goals, and multiple plywood panels were kicked in on Saturday night.
The Eccles Rugby Club have shared they have footage of the incident and have passed it forward to the police.
The rugby club is run by volunteers and they have estimated that vandalism events such as this will cost the club thousands to repair that the club don’t have.
This was shared by Club chair Christopher Gaffey, who said: “It’s just mindless vandalism, mindless criminal damage.
“I don’t know whether they’re doing it for entertainment, what they think is fun, whether they think it’s amusing, whether they’ve got an issue with the club.
As he continued: “I don’t know why people do this, it does nothing apart from Sunday morning when the volunteers turn up to provide support for children and the first thing they’ve got to do is deal with vandalism, not deal with children, they’ve got to clean up mess.”
Last night plywood panels on our 3G pitch were kicked in and the goals destroyed. This mindless criminal damage prevents our club from providing sport for children in our community.
The CCTV footage will be passed on to the Police. pic.twitter.com/qedNyZOHPi— Eccles RFC (@EcclesRugby) November 17, 2024
The pitch is used for training purposes during the winter by the club, but is also available for community use, with junior football teams often training or playing matches there.
Gaffey added: “Then of course the people that were hiring the pitch for the day, we have to cancel it because the pitch can no longer be used.
“We’ve also got the cost of replacing the panels and replacing the goals, which weren’t repairable.
“What takes a few minutes of violent fun for a few individuals, becomes hours and hours of work for volunteers who have other things to do in their lives. It costs money, we’re an organisation that does not have pots of money to throw around.”
This isn’t the first time the club has seen equipment damaged, with rugby posts bent back three separate times last year, as well as motorbikes being ridden on the turf and an attempt to set the pitch on fire.
Gaffey added on the arson attempt, as he said: “On that particular occasion, those individuals were caught in the act, we had CCTV, the police were called, they were spoken to and the damage was paid for by the individual responsible.
“On this occasion, it’s dark and we hope someone can do something about it and that’s all we can do. We can’t put a security guard on our premises all night. What else can you do?”
This event represents a pattern of criminal damage to sports facilities in the local area, particularly in the Winter months.
Gaffey concluded: “We appear to have an issue at the moment in our community with individuals damaging sports equipment for unknown reasons and causing chaos”.
If you have any information regarding the incident, the club can be contacted here.
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