Young footballers may see their training sessions threatened after “mindless” arsonists set fire to their club's six goal posts.

Stretton Eagles Junior Football Club now has no goal posts at its Hillfield Lane training ground, in Stretton, and needs to find £150 to repaint the aluminium posts and pay for replacement nets following the fire at the weekend.

Richard Thornewill, the club’s under-12s manager, dubbed the arsonists “mindless idiots”, claiming the fires could have an effect on the club’s ability to keep its 10 teams training throughout the summer.

He said: “One of our members went down to the ground at the weekend and told us that some mindless idiots had set fire to the goal posts.

“We have six goal posts and they have completely destroyed the nets so now we have to find £150 to buy new ones and repaint the posts.

The replacement nets will cost £150

“They cost us about £1,000 when we bought them about 18 months ago.

“Our club secretary will order some new nets but if we can't then we will have to use jumpers as goal posts.

“We now have to find that money. As a club we are not in a position to be able to replace the goal post nets immediately and this is going to have an affect on our ability to keep training throughout the summer.”

The goal posts had been chained up outside when they were set on fire and the club may now have to step up its security.

Mr Thornewill said the football club had been a victim of arsonists in the past.

He said: “It has happened before. They broke into the container where we stored equipment and set fire to some corner posts.

"Our goal posts cannot fit in the container so we were chaining them up outside but now we will probably get a bigger container to put them in.

“It is just mindless to set fire to them.”

Anyone who would like to donate towards the replacement goal posts can do so by calling Richard Thornewill on 07806 792121.