An historic cricket club has become the victim of repeated vandalism.
One of the first incidents at St Mary's Cricket Club, based in Birkenhead Park, was when the pitch covers were slashed wide-open. Following that attack, the club installed CCTV cameras to protect the grounds.
However, the cameras became the vandals' next target, with the club's volunteer groundsmen finding them smashed to pieces two days ago.
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St Mary's, which was founded in 1872, is a club entirely run by volunteers - its board members are volunteers, as are those who play for the club in competitions and those who maintain the grounds and create a friendly environment which members say feels like being part of a "big family". Dealing with these incidents will not come cheap for the club, which only recently raised enough money for the first pitch covers in the club's 149-year history after they won the Southport premier division league.
Craig Hawthorne, who volunteers for the club, told the ECHO the vandalism was "senseless" and almost felt like an attack on the club's members itself. He said: "There's a lot of committee members and a lot of players who put a huge effort in to try and get the club up and running.
"We won the league two years ago and that's when we bought the covers. Everything was on the up so to speak but this, this is just disheartening because there's nothing we can do about it really.
"The club has never had covers and it's been going since 1872. It was a huge effort all round to raise the money in the first place.
"We can't be there 24/7 to watch over the place, because we all work too and the public can only help us as much as they can. We get constant reports of people lying in the covers and messing with it all, so we try and send someone down to move them along but you can't move 30 kids along easily can you.
"There's just no reason behind it apart from antisocial behaviour. There's no reason for anyone to be doing it, there's nothing to rob, there's nothing for them to gain off it- it's just senseless. We got cameras put in to try and detect who was damaging everything and they've now been destroyed. It's a nightmare to be honest.
"It's disheartening for everyone- for all the members who put all the effort in, especially the groundsmen who are all elderly and go down to sort the pitch out for us week in and week out out of the kindness of their own hearts.
"They're turning up now to big pools of water on the pitch because the covers have been slashed.
"There's no easy-fix, so we're going to have to replace the damaged cover which will be around £700 because you can't just patch it up. It'd have to be a whole new thing from a specialist company."
The cricket club has appealed to any members of the public who may have any information to get in touch.
