Young Angus footballers have been put at serious risk after vandals scattered four-inch nails across their club pitches.
The attack on the Pitskelly Park home of Carnoustie Panmure Youth FC has been condemned after hundreds of nails were discovered on the ground on Tuesday. Club officials now face the task of trying to make sure the playing surface is safe for the weekend games.
The sabotage has already led to the cancellation of training for players as young as six and a step-by-step sweep of the ground is to go ahead on Thursday in a bid to try to clear the danger.
Police are understood to be probing the Angus incident, which occurred overnight on Monday after those responsible are believed to have broken into an adjoining yard and taken the nails from there.
The pitches a full-size 11-a-side and two seven-a-side are leased by the club from Angus Council and local authority grounds staff made the discovery on Tuesday morning.
They have already gathered up a bucket-load of the large nails from the playing surface, but there are many more to collect before the pitches can be declared safe.
Club secretary Phil Hope said it was a serious act with the potential to cause major harm.
”These are big nails and if they were to go into a youngster it could be a really bad injury,” he said. ”We’re encouraging the kids to get involved in the game and get into the tackles but if this went into their leg or hand when they were sliding on the ground it would do a lot of damage.
”Clearly whoever did this hasn’t thought at all about the consequences of spreading these on the park.”
Club vice-president Steve Finan said the shocking incident was the latest in a string of setbacks for the youth set-up.
”I would absolutely condemn this action. How could anyone be so thoughtless as to place children in danger like this when they are trying to play football? It looks like it’s been done in a deliberate attempt to hurt people.”
He added: ”We’ve had numerous problems. Bins have been set on fire and we’ve had to go from having the goals set up and left in place to a situation where we now have to put up and take down the aluminium goalposts for every game.
”For this to happen just makes it even more annoying for those trying to provide a decent set up for the young footballers in the area.”
On Thursday, the Panmure Youth set-up will benefit from a community scheme run by Mr Hope’s Scottish Hydro Electric bosses, but the planned programme has been dropped and replaced by the sweep of the playing surface.
”Around a dozen colleagues of mine are due to come up as part of the company’s Community at Heart scheme,” he said. ”We were going to be carrying out maintenance and other work including clearing undergrowth and filling in rabbit holes, which are also a problem on the pitches.
”This now has to be a priority so we will be lining up across the pitch and walking across it to see if we can pick up any nails that might be left there.”
Mr Finan hopes the club might also be able to count on technology to clear the risk.
”Trying to make sure that we get every last nail could be a near impossible task, but if there was someone with a metal detector willing to help us that could be something which would help,” he said.
The club’s under-17s manager Billy Hoon said: ”It’s pretty shocking that someone could stoop so low. We’ve just started training inside, but the younger kids might still be out on these pitches and it’s sad that someone could do this.”
A spokesman for Angus Council said: ”We have had a squad of four picking up the nails by hand today, and have alerted the local club, Carnoustie Youth FC, to the situation.
”We condemn this act of vandalism, which means that the park may be unplayable meantime due to the risk of any remaining nails.”