Football club suffers 'devastating' break-in

Thousands of pounds' worth of equipment has been stolen from a grassroots football club during a break-in described as "absolutely devastating".

Thieves targeted Catshill FC in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, on Saturday night, prising open a locked container to steal two riding lawnmowers, goalposts, five bags of footballs, line markers and other grounds maintenance tools.

The club has 24 teams, including youth sides for players as young as four and senior sides for over-50s.

"This sort of activity, this mindless stupidity, just takes away from the local children," said chairman Dean Mitchell.

Mitchell received a phone call on Sunday morning to tell him about the break-in at the Catshill Village Meadow, one of five pitches the club rents for training and matches.

"It was quite a panic and a shock, as you can imagine," he said. "They had to break four locks to get in, which is quite amazing.

"So I think these are people that know what they're doing."

The lawnmowers and footballs alone were worth a total of £7,500, and the club has launched an online fundraiser to try to recover some of the costs.

"It's frustating, because it's all funded by the parents paying subs," said Mitchell. "We're not a profit organisation of any kind.

"Everything we we get goes straight into equipment and things like that".

Mitchell added that the theft was a particularly bitter pill to swallow, as the club had just won the Grounds Team of the Year Award in the Worcestershire FA's Grassroots Football Awards.

"To go from that amazing feeling of Friday night, the appreciation for all the hard work our volunteers put in to maintain the pitches for the children of the local community, to the low of the equipment being taken away the next night, was tough," he said.

Although the club is now in the off-season, some teams do continue training through the summer.

"We've got a training session on Wednesday," said Mitchell. "We wouldn't have had any equipment to train with, but we've had some local donations, which has been great.

"We have children from all different walks of life that we support - it's their happy place.

"It's devastating."

West Mercia Police said inquiries were ongoing.

Follow BBC Hereford & Worcester on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.