Montrose Football Club: Storm damage cleaned up before vandals graffiti club rooms
Cruel yobs have struck hours after Montrose volunteers cleaned up footy grounds damaged in the devastating storms, while CCTV was down.
Outer East
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A Yarra Ranges footy club has been dealt another kick in the guts following one of the worst storms to have ever hit the region.
Like most of the Dandenong Ranges and foothills, Montrose Football Club copped some of the storm’s fury with trees down across the Mt Dandenong Tourist Rd grounds.
Despite the continued foul weather, club officials put a call out to the tight knit sporting community for volunteers to help clean up the grounds so the children could practice and play again.
Most of the Montrose community was without power for four days, while some remain blacked out following Wednesday night’s weather.
Trees had toppled, damaging goals posts and parts of the ground, which took workers hours with diggers, chainsaws and old fashioned hard work to clean up on Saturday, June 12.
The crew not only fixed up the grounds to make it safe for the children to play on, but cleared a tree that had fallen in the township centre, on a favourite community tree.
But the absolute disappointment set in when, only a few hours later, the club was informed someone had graffitied the clubrooms.
Chairman Aaron Puddy said with the power out the vandals obviously knew the CCTV was off and had covered the outer walls of the changerooms, spectator boxes and clubrooms with tags.
Mr Puddy said 20 club volunteers had spent hours working to clean up the storm mess but were gutted when they saw what vandals had done to club building.
“It’s disappointing all after all that hard work and someone has done this,” he said.
“They took advantage of the fact the power was out.”
Mr Puddy urged anyone who might have seen the vandals or anyone acting suspiciously between 8.30pm on Saturday and 5.30am on Sunday, June 13, to contact police or Crime Stoppers.
“We’re disgusted, disappointed and frustrated,” he said.
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