Hunt for 4WD hoon who destroyed Baxter Soccer Club’s training pitch

Mornington Peninsula soccer players have taken police investigation into their own hands, jumping in the car and following a hoon they caught tearing up their pitch.

A hoon damaged the training pitch of the Baxter Soccer Club on Thursday night. Picture: Supplied

Southeast soccer players have taken police investigation into their own hands, jumping in the car and following a hoon they caught tearing up their pitch.

Baxter Soccer Club president Bray Hodgkinson said members were shocked to walk out of the clubrooms just after 10pm on Thursday to discover a white 4WD doing doughnuts on the grounds.

“(The driver) drove off the pitch after doing their burnouts, and then drove into the flora and fauna park at the back — there’s like a walking track in amongst a big vegetation bushland area behind our pavilion,” Mr Hodgkinson said.

“And then they went and did some four-wheel driving through there and from what I can imagine, did some significant damage to the vegetation and the environment.

“We had a few people try and block them in and try to get some registration.”

But not keen to let the driver escape, Mr Hodgkinson and a friend hopped in the car, following him to a home nearby.

The turf was badly damaged and players were unable to train on the pitch. Picture: Supplied

He said hooning activity happened quite often in the area.

“Mostly by young P-platers getting their cars for the first time and want to cut loops on a spare patch of grass in the middle of a park,” Mr Hodgkinson said.

“It just inconveniences us a lot — it’s caused pretty significant damage to one of our training pitches which probably takes out a quarter of our training surface.

“It creates massive headaches for the club itself in terms of scheduling.”

He added training times would have to be altered and moved around, and the club would have to find another venue to hold many of its sessions.

“We have up to 12 teams training at the same time on the one training pitch which you can imagine 200 people on a very small area is pretty chaos as it is,” Mr Hodgkinson said.

“So now to lose probably 30 per cent of that area, it’s going to make our lives a hell of a lot worse.”

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Mr Hodgkinson said the club was working with Frankston City Council to find another pitch for their players.
“There are a lot of clubs in the area, so there’s not a lot of free space for us,” he said.

Mr Hodgkinson added even a spare 50m of grass that had lights for the players to practice on would be a big help.

He estimated the cost to fix the damage to the pitch and walking track more than $10,000.

“Fortunately for us, it’s not on the club to fix, it’s maintained by Frankston City Council,” he said.

“Luckily from what we know, (the driver) didn’t clip any of the sprinkler systems — there was no irrigation damage.

“If there was — I’d say more than $50,000 damage just to replace the irrigation.”

Frankston City Council was contacted for comment.

The incident has been reported to police.