Football event called off due to Travellers - Shropshire

From the Shropshire Star

A group of Travellers today remained on community football pitches near Oswestry – forcing the postponement of a five-a-side soccer festival which was due to be staged this weekend.

About 20 Traveller families drove their caravans on to Oswestry Boys’ and Girls’ Football Club’s pitches at Park Hall on Saturday.

Club bosses had hoped the families would leave yesterday but have now been told the Travellers would be staying until tomorrow.

Chairman Neil Jones said the club had reluctantly decided to postpone this weekend’s five-a-side festival. He warned the club may have to look at options on how to remove them if the families remained on site.

The Travellers arrived at the Park Hall pitches at the weekend when they found the site of their Christian Travellers’ event at Halston Hall, near Whittington, waterlogged.

Club bosses fear thousands of pounds of damage may have already been caused to some of the pitches because some of the families had driven their vehicles across the pitch.

Mr Jones said: “We don’t feel we can run the festival this weekend because of the travellers being at the site.

“It will take place the following weekend and we are contacting players now to tell them. We have seven pitches and four, maybe five, have been so churned up.

“We are run by volunteers who all work very hard for the club.

“Hopefully the Travellers will leave and we can get on with repairing the pitches.”