“Mindless idiots” have caused outrage by using a motorbike to carve a rude image into a children’s football pitch.
Lines of brown soil have been churned through the turf to create the graphic depiction of a man's genitals at Woodside Playing Fields on Palacefields Avenue in Runcorn - also known as Queen Elizabeth II Playing Fields. The image was also surrounded by more randomised curved bike tracks.
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The pitch is clearly marked with penalty boxes, centre circle, halfway lines and goal posts, and lies close to residential areas at The Glen and Brookvale. Social media users have expressed dismay.
Writing on a residents’ Facebook page, the woman who posted a set of images of the damaged turf, said: “We have to pay for these pitches so it's not funny, you can clearly see they're marked out for kids’ football. Mindless idiots.”
Another user said the culprits were not children and looked in their 20s.
But one person suggested Halton Borough Council should install a bike track somewhere to divert riders from public spaces.
There had been uncertainty over the future of the pitch until recently, with a land use assessment produced by Halton Borough Council suggesting that 79 homes could be built on the land.
That proposal now appears to have been scrapped, with the local authority committing to retaining the field's green space designation in its core planning document the Delivery and Allocations Local Plan, which sets out how land is to be used in Runcorn, Widnes and wider Halton until 2037 and was approved in March.
