Vandals Damage Football Pitch: Junior footballers from Spalding were left “devastated and disheartened” after vandals wrecked their pitch and equipment on Friday night.

Players and officials from Spalding United Youth Football Club arrived for their games in West Pinchbeck, only to find that a pitch had been vandalised and a container storing equipment used by the club had been broken into.

A pitch marker and rope used by the club were stolen and dumped in a ditch full of water, but not before the marker had been used to leave graffiti on the pitch itself and on Leaves Lake Drove where the playing field is located.

The vandals struck sometime between Thursday night, when Spalding United’s junior players had their last training session, and about 9am on Saturday morning.

Club secretary Chiara Lyon said: “My colleague on our committee received a call early on Saturday morning with a message that the pitch we play on in West Pinchbeck had been vandalised and the equipment in which we store all our equipment had been stolen.

“I drove down to Leaves Lake Drove at 9am on Saturday, only to find that some nice pictures had been drawn on the pitch and the container had been broken into.

“A pitch marker used to paint the lines on the pitches had been taken out of the container and used on the pitch before it was thrown into a dyke.

“There was paint all over the road and some “Respect” barriers to keep spectators off the pitch had been thrown into the dyke as well.

“I was devastated as some of the children had travelled from quite a distance away and we had to explain to them that their game go ahead as the police wanted to have a look at what had happened.”

Among the youngsters affected were a team from Newmarket, who had made a 127-mile round trip to play against one of the Spalding United junior teams.

Chiara said: “We had a team training session at Leaves Lake Drove on Thursday evening, but we don’t use the pitch on Fridays.

“There were two games scheduled on Saturday which had to be called off but once the police had finished, myself and some of the other committee members spent several hours cleaning the pitch.

“It wasn’t the nicest of feelings and it wasn’t the call I expected on Saturday morning when I was supposed to have been taking my youngster to a match.

“We’ve managed to get the pitch playable again, after it took us six hours to tidy things up.

“But it was very disheartening to see what happened because it affects the children.”

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