A COMMUNITY cricket club is facing a massive repair bill after vandals drove repeatedly across its playing field.

Green Lane Cricket Club will have to pay at least £1,000 to put right the damage caused by the vehicle which left eight-inch groves in the ground.

The club at Nunroyd Park has suffered a series of mindless attacks over the last few years. But the latest incident over the weekend has shocked officials to the core.

One of them, Tommy Powell, said: "When I first saw the damage I was physically sick. I just don't know how we are going to repair it.

"They have made a right mess - it is just unbelievable. It has come back to haunt us again."

The club has previously been plagued with incidents of people driving across the field - but Mr Powell said the latest is the worst so far, possibly because the ground is so soft.

The vehicle has carved numerous grooves, as deep as six to eight inches, in the field - leaving the club with a hefty bill to fill in the damage and re-seed the ground.

"It is going to be £1,000 easily - and that is the sort of money we haven't got," Mr Powell said.

"All we can hope for is that a sponsor will come forward and give us the money to get it done."

He stressed: "We are giving a service to the public and then you get these mindless idiots who do this."

Mr Powell said the last incident was just three months ago when someone parked on the field.

In 2009 a joint campaign was launched by police, Leeds City Council and club officials to stop hooligans who were driving over the cricket field and adjacent parkland.

Four years later joyriders left a trail of destruction, and hundreds of pounds worth of damage, after driving over the cricket pitch. That incident came just three years after thousands of pounds had to be spent on relaying and re-planting the pitch after it was vandalised twice within the space of just six weeks.

In 2015 heartless vandals destroyed a tree planted in memory of a woman by her family,

and caused at least £500 worth of damage when they smashed a cricket screen. In the weeks leading up to that incident £2,000 worth of damage had been caused to fencing.