A grassroots football club could lose thousands of pounds of vital income after “selfish” motorcyclists tore up four of its pitches.

The damage to the playing surface at Sittingbourne Football Club’s Woodstock Park home could mean several youth and women’s games will be cancelled as a result of the pitches being unplayable on safety grounds.

Club chairman Maurice Dunk told KentOnline the cost of losing a weekend’s fixtures could run into the thousands as a result of lost pitch hire fees and a reduction in takings at the ground’s bar.

Fortunately, there are no games scheduled for the Easter weekend but it will now be down to a band of volunteers to try to repair the damage to ensure next week’s matches can go ahead.

The 69-year-old believes the damage was done by riders of off-road motorbikes or quad bikes overnight on Thursday – and he has slammed the action of those involved because of the impact on hundreds of local footballers.

Mr Dunk said: “They are not playable, a referee wouldn’t let you play on it because it’s ruts like that that will cause somebody to twist their ankle.

“On Tuesday we have got to start some intense work on trying to repair it, it should be the time of year that it starts to regrow, but we’ve got a lot of work there to do.

“It’ll be some sand and soil and probably some seed, but it’s not what you want to be doing when you’re just trying to run out the last month of the season and get all the matches played.

“It really is a community place, so anybody doing damage like that is really punching all of those community groups in the face.

“We are really tolerant, we put up with kids playing there when they shouldn’t, and we say ‘look, don’t play in the goalmouths, don’t ruin it’. But there’s not a lot you can do about people riding up and down on motorbikes or vehicles and causing all that damage.

“I’d say [to the culprits] ‘look, your selfish actions have caused all these kids from five upwards to probably lose their football matches’.”

Mr Dunk says he hopes the group of volunteers tasked with repairing the pitches – which are separate from the first team’s main ground – will swell on Tuesday as people muck in to get the facilities back up to scratch.

The damage has been reported to police but the club does not hold out much hope that anything will come of it.

Mr Dunk says he hopes at least community officers will be on the lookout for anyone who might do similar damage elsewhere.