Police and soccer officials are looking for someone to blow the whistle on vandals who drove a car on to Napier's busiest sports field during the weekend and ripped up parts of five soccer pitches.
The damage at Park Island North is thought to have been caused on Friday night or
Saturday morning and was discovered only when hundreds of young players and parents began arriving for their weekly games.
At least 500 children play at Park Island on Saturday mornings. Parents and officials were disgusted with the damage with one parent asking: "What sort of idiot would waste their time doing that?"
Another, after seeing the damage, said: "We have some true scum in Napier." The parent said the culprits also left empty bottles scattered about.
Central Football Eastern operations manager Phil Holt, who was out of town for the weekend, said that fortunately the damage did not appear to have posed a significant danger and it could have been worse.
"We have other free pitches which we could use."
In addition to the tyre marks across the grounds, he was also contacted about vandalism at the changing rooms where ground-keeping spades and brooms were taken and thrown across a car park area.
He will be sending out notices to clubs and participants to be aware of what has been happening and to keep an eye out.
Council work to secure grounds had stopped the frequency of vandals in cars damaging pitches in recent years, he said, but police understood the weekend vandals had cut a chain to open a barrier to the ground.
Black tyre marks also covered much of the surface of the car park at the entrance to the playing fields.
Senior Sergeant Dan Foley, of Napier Police, said they were asking for information about any vehicles or people in the area seen during the time the damage was caused and promised that, if identified, they would be prosecuted.
