By TANIA PHILLIPS
COUNCIL grounds keepers are racing against time this week to prepare Arkinstall Park, Tweed Heads, for the summer six-a-side soccer competition after the vandalisation of fields at the weekend.
Tweed United Soccer Club president Mark Thelwall said all four Arkinstall Park grounds were severely damaged.
Thelwall, a nurseryman by trade, said from the damage and regrowth he believed the incident occurred some time late on Friday evening.
“Some clown got on the grounds (in a car) and did donuts across the three main fields,” he said.
“The damage wasn’t there on Thursday or Friday when were were signing people up for the six-a-side and it was discovered on Sunday morning. But there was a bit of regrowth on Sunday when we found it which suggests it happened late Friday.
“They’ve done a fair bit of damage. The council started work top dressing it on Monday and are trying to cover it.
“We have 240 players signed up to start six-a-side on Friday night – hopefully the council will be able to do enough for it to go ahead.”
Thelwall said the incident, which had been reported to the Tweed Police, was not the first at the ground this season.
“This is the third time this year we’ve been hit. On the same night that someone damaged the ground in Murwillumbah earlier this year we were also hit – but at that point we didn’t say anything (to the public),” he said saying the club had hoped it would be an isolated incident.
However the club has now been affected twice since then with the latest incident, the worst yet.
“They’ve done a job on it this time, it’s been hammered,” he said.
“We got 50mm of rain earlier in the week but thankfully no more – it would have been very sloppy on the field in that case but having said that it’s still pretty bad.
“It’s across all four fields – even the smaller under six-sevens field has been damaged.
“It’s gutwrenching for everyone. “
He said the only positive to come out of the incident was how quickly the other soccer/football clubs in the region had spread the word to their members, too, about the incident. Thelwall said the only way that such actions would be stamped out was if all the clubs joined together.
Thelwall urged anyone with any information to contact Crime Stoppers or the Tweed police.
