VANDALS have continued to target a New Forest football club with mindless damage just days into the new season.

Lymington Town have suffered again in the latest spate of anti-social behaviour to take place on the sports ground off Southampton Road.

Earlier this week, culprits targeted the main stand structure, a ticket selling kiosk and severely damaged one of the brick dugouts.

Smashed glass and scores of nitrous oxide canisters, used as a recreational drug known as laughing gas, could be seen scattered on the floor.

The Wessex League outfit, who travel to Cowes Sports on Saturday for their FA Cup extra-preliminary-round tie, are calling for support to help address the consistent spate of vandalism.

Committee member Les Mondry-Flesch said: “These incidents are tedious. As a football club, alongside the cricket club, we have made calls long and hard to the local constabulary and the council that this is a public facility that should be looked after and respected. Are they not not proud of it because we do not want to see it in this way.

“People are going to need to be paid to put these things back to how they should be.

“It is a public facility so we cannot simply lock the gates and stop people using it. We have argued for a long time to try and get some sort of solution for the problem.”

Lymington do not host a match this season until several weeks into the campaign due to their shared use of the field with the cricket club. Previous incidents at the ground have seen areas of the stand suffer fire damage, while the wooden seats are covered in graffiti.

Mr Mondry-Flesch said he is hopeful progress can be made with the local authority to improve the situation.

“We are in discussions with the council to install roller shutters on the stand. Hopefully, this would alleviate some of the issues we have experienced,” said Mr Mondry-Flesch.

“It would be great if we could have a big roller shutter and allow local art students to produce a canvas on there.

“Doing this would give young people in the area an opportunity to express their creative talents in a positive way and advertise Lymington as a town in a good light if we worked on a theme for the project.”