Cricket pitch is ‘stuffed’
Club’s horror as hoons tear up $60,000 grounds
A GOLD Coast cricket club’s members are devastated after a new $60,000 pitch was destroyed by hoons doing doughnuts on the ground at the weekend.
The Palm Beach-Currumbin Club’s recently-laid wicket block at Salk Oval was torn up by tyre tracks late on Saturday.
The cricket club has spent about $60,000 putting in a new five-wicket block and the damage is such that the ground may not be available for use for 10 weeks or more.
“I haven’t seen it personally, but have been sent photos by people,” Palm Beach-Currumbin Cricket Club president Ryan Kettle said.
“Obviously it doesn’t look great and there seems a fair bit of damage to the pitch.
“It will need work to repair it and that costs money.”
The club shares Salk Oval in alternate seasons with the Palm Beach-Currumbin AFL club, whose members were celebrating their QAFL grand final win against Labrador on Saturday.
PBC football club president Anne Cornish said her club was looking into the matter and would take appropriate action if warranted.
She said she had no idea of what went on during the early hours and who was to blame for the vandalism.
“I do not have any facts or information,” Mrs Cornish said. “We don’t know whether it was supporters, footballers or whether it was just a random thing.
“We’ll be working with the cricket club but until we know what has gone on there’s not much we can do at this stage.”
Mr Kettle, who plays first grade for Palm Beach-Currumbin, said the weekend incident was the second similar act of vandalism to the Salk Oval wicket block in about five years.
That incident also involved a car being driven through a boundary fence and onto the wicket. In the historic matter, a scoreboard was also trashed, set on fire in the middle of the wicket.
Mr Kettle said: “I would really like to think it had nothing to do with the football club.”
Another Palm Beach-Currumbin cricket official, treasurer and player Chris Carroll said the new wicket block was “stuffed”.
“There has been a whole lot of hard work gone into the new block but now the whole thing has been cooked,” he said.
“The club has been saving. It’s hard to be able to do this so we’d like to see someone man up and to do something.”