A TRACTOR belonging to soccer club Shannon Hibernians was the target of vandals last weekend with the culprits even putting petrol in to its diesel tank.
“They must have jumped over our fence, we have a fence around the pitch, but they went in and smashed up the tractor. They smashed the windows, they broke off the exhaust pipe. It runs off diesel, and they put oil and petrol into the diesel tank,” said club PRO Aaron Leahy.
Gardai were called and have visited the scene, but the culprits have not been identified. The club put a post on social media about it this week, in the hope that some parents may be prompted to realise what their children have been doing.
“Some parents might have seen their kids going back into the house with oil or petrol on their hands.
“We would hope that parents would deal with it, we just wanted to highlight what has happened. There is a lot of damage to the tractor, and at the moment we have nothing to cut our grass. We’ll have to try and borrow one off another local club.”
On the positive side Co Motion, which runs the bike sharing scheme in Shannon, stepped up to help the club.
“They have been great, they saw our post on Facebook and got in touch. They had a similar issue with bikes being vandalised around Shannon. They donated €500 to help get back on track. That was brilliant to get, it’s a massive help. They wouldn’t have any affiliation with our club, it was just generosity to help us out.”
Aaron says vandalism around the town needs to stop.
“You just hope this doesn’t happen again. I know the local rugby club St Senan’s have had issues with vandalism around their place and you’d hope it doesn’t keep happening around Shannon.”
Owen Ryan has been a journalist with the Clare Champion since 2007, having previously worked with a number of other publications in Limerick, Cork and Galway. His first book will be published in December 2024.