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Wales Online
Wales Online
Sport
Simon Thomas

'Brainless idiots' ruin popular Cardiff playing field as pitch gouged and rugby posts destroyed

Vandals who wrecked a pitch used by a Cardiff rugby club, putting it out of action for the rest of the season, have been described as “brainless idiots”.

The WJEC pitch on Llandaff Fields has been ruined by deeply-gouged tyre tracks, while the rugby posts have also been broken and pulled down. It’s an area used by Llandaff RFC for training and matches for all age-grades up from minis to seniors. But now it will be out of action until next season. The club have hit out angrily at the people responsible for the damage.

READ MORE: Dai Young's brutal Cardiff verdict as his side come second best 'in every area'

They tweeted: “Big thank you to the brainless idiots who’ve done this overnight, ruining the WJEC pitch on Llandaff Fields! This effects all levels throughout our club from stopping our minis and juniors using it on a Sunday to our youth and seniors using it for training and matches.”

The club added: “Parks have informed us that WJEC has been vandalised and will be out of action until next season now. It’s a massive blow to our minis and juniors who now have one less pitch on a Sunday morning and it’s also now stopping our seniors training here for the foreseeable.”

Daf Rees, who coaches the Llandaff first team forwards, gave his thoughts to WalesOnline, outlining what appears to have happened.

“We have heard someone was supposedly joy-riding a van down there on Monday night,” he said. “I have no idea how they got on to that part of Llandaff Fields because it’s only a small opening off Western Avenue opposite our clubhouse, unless they have gone all the way from the other end by the cafe.

“They are real deep gouges from the tyres and we’re presuming they drove into the posts as well because those are down. You have to wonder about the mentality of these people. It’s just disgusting.

“We have been training on the 4G pitch down at Llanishen because we haven’t got floodlights. This week was supposed to be our move back because we have got the light now. So we were going to train on that pitch from this week. Obviously that can’t happen now and it affects our minis and juniors as well because they use that pitch on a Sunday. It’s probably one of our most used pitches.

“So it has a pretty big knock-on effect for the whole club. It’s put a huge spanner in the works. It’s just so disappointing. We have had such a good season in terms of results. We are second in our division (League 3 East Central B). We have just got everything back on track with the club following the Covid shutdown. For something like this to happen is so annoying. The parks departments have said it won’t be sorted out now until next season.”

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