On Monday morning, staff members of Bude Town FC discovered their clubhouse broken into, vandalized, and robbed.
A group of criminals are suspected to have used a crowbar to break open the door and raid the clubhouse, taking cash, bottles of spirits, and damaging much of the property.
The front door of the Bude Town FC Clubhouse
Bude Town FC Club Secretary, Richard Pinkus, said: “They used a crowbar to smash into the front doors, the inner door as well, went into the clubhouse and got into the bar. Smashed through the door of the storeroom and ransacked that. We don’t normally have cash on the premises, but we had a small tin of cash with about 100 quid in it.”
“They smashed the till with a crowbar to get into it, even though the till had the key in it so could have gotten into it that way.”
The club have started a fundraiser on JustGiving.com with the hopes of raising £1,500 to gather the funds to replace what was stolen or damaged during the break-in.
The cluhouse till after the break-in
The fundraiser says they need money for new “2 new sets of doors, reinforce the windows, a new alarm system, locks, till, CCTV” and more. According to Richard, the club have already had offers for many of the items which need replacing, such as Howdens offering them a news set of doors.
Richard said: “We put [the fundraiser] out on Facebook Sunday afternoon telling people what had gone on, and the response from that was absolutely amazing. One guy in town put up 100 quid in about an hour of us putting it on Facebook. We’ve had so much support from people, and it’s been such a community pulling together. It’s just been amazing.”
The fundraiser has already raised £1,000, with groups like Millbrook FC and the Budeful Runners club donating money to the cause. Millbrook FC said: “Good luck with getting things sorted from all of us at Millbrook Football Club. Grassroots clubs need to stick together.” Trevor Plant donated £20, commenting: “Come on Bude, let’s get behind this. Bude Football Club does masses for the community. Here’s a little help from Trev’s Taxi and I’d love to see all the other taxis here giving back.”
If you’d like to donate to the fundraiser, it can be found here.