Footballers give vandals a kicking

Community football club Spalding United Youth have had fantastic support after vandals caused hundreds of pounds of damage to their main West Pinchbeck pitch causing some games to not go ahead.

But an online appeal to raise £500 to cover the costs of the damage found at the Leaveslake Drove ground on Saturday hit its target in just hours.

The vandals had also drawn a rude image using a pitch marker and the club’s volunteers spent six hours on the Saturday clearing the image before volunteers came down the following day for an organised Great British Spring Clean.

That event too proved a huge success with a fantastic 80 people turning up to clean the surrounding area.

They picked up everything including a kitchen sink.

On Monday, several of the teams who were unable to play on Saturday returned to action in friendly matches.

The vandals had broken into the club’s container where they keep their equipment, broke the pitch marker after taking it around the pitch and destroyed barriers the club needs to put up on match days to follow FA regulations. Paint was also thrown all over.

The club’s secretary Chiara Lyon, estimated that the cost to the club is £500 but they’ve already been pledged £665 and been offered a £250 donation from the Spalding Round Table.

“We’ve had a fantastic response from the community and can’t thank everyone enough for the donations,” she said. “We had about 45 kids excited to play Saturday morning that we had to turn away.

“We also had the Spring Clean event and it was fantastic to see quite a few children giving up their Sunday to clean up litter alongside those in the village who came down and showed us support.”