Thieves caught on CCTV targeting junior football team's hub

Tom Harrison, a founding member of Hindley Juniors FC, was appalled last week when he received a call to say that the Park Road site had been broken into.

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The secretary, who has built the 400-strong club up from the ground, was called to the club at around 1.30pm on April 16 after the security alarm went off at the site.

“It’s a remote building,” said Tom. “It’s pretty important for us to have decent security.

“We have invested in both reasonably sophisticated alarm systems and CCTV surveillance.

“The footage showed three men cut the locks off the outer gates and get through pretty easily.

“We then have some very heavy duty locks on the building and storage units, clearly they couldn’t snap through them.”

During their attempts to get inside the building, the men ripped the alarms off and smashed them on the floor.

“Fortunately our security systems worked,” added Tom.

“They carried on going off even when they had been ripped out.

“It’s going to cost us money in terms of replacing all of this.

“It will be a few hundred to replace the locks and there will be an excess to replace the surveillance kit.

“We are run on a voluntary basis.

“And it is a nuisance apart from anything else, we will need new sets of keys for all of the coaches.

“We have matches in the evenings as well as weekends, so there is a bit of running around going on until that gets sorted. It is business as usual though.”

The video, which has been shared on social media, showed the trio cutting the locks in broad daylight before walking boldly through the gates.

“It was very brazen,” said Tom. ““We have shared it and people have given us names.

“They are local to us and they do have a reputation for this kind of thing.”

Tom said he had reported the incident to police immediately and an investigation is underway.

No arrests had been made as the Post went to press.