Vandals target Stratford Sports Club

Vandals who have caused thousands of pounds worth of damage at Stratford Sports Club in recent weeks are being hunted by police.

The latest incident, late on 26 July, saw the group destroy a £2,000 mobile cricket cover on the cricket pitch before trespassing on the clubhouse roof between 11pm and midnight.

There have been at least three other incidents of youngsters climbing onto the roof in recent weeks and the club’s CCTV cameras and roof guttering have been damaged in these previous incidents.

It appears that youngsters are getting onto the roof and jumping off.

This latest spate of antisocial behaviour follows two serious incidents at the club in the spring, when criminals attempted to break into the bar and in another instance try to disable the building’s alarm system.

Though there is nothing to suggest that the latest incidents are connected to the criminal activity earlier in the year, it has resulted in costly damage.

The vandalism comes as a blow to the club, which was hit badly by flooding earlier in the year.

Steve Coots, chairman of Stratford Cricket Club, said: “This is a further setback for the club, and now we’ve got to investigate what options are available to us through insurance. We need to resolve this problem.

“We are now a cover down and that impacts how effectively we can cover the wicket and could potentially jeopardise matches.

“This is just mindless vandalism and it’s detrimental to the community because they are hurting our members who stretch across all age groups and it is hurting one of the main sports clubs in the town. Another aspect of it is that the roof is quite a dangerous place for youngsters to be messing around.”

If you have any information regarding the anti-social behaviour at the club last week call police on 101 with the crime reference number 23S6/25289M/16.