CALDICOT AFC are back on their pitch again, after it was closed due to yobs injuring a player by throwing broken glass on to the field.

The King George V playing fields were closed until the town council were confident the pitch was safe, following the Caldicot Town player’s injury in a match against Cwmbran Celtic on July 27. He suffered a serious knee injury which required an ambulance and stitches.

Club members and the council attributed the broken glass to yobs drinking in the stands, then throwing litter and glass on to the field.

In a special meeting of Caldicot Town Council on Monday, councillors voted the football club should be permitted to play all of its planned fixtures, including the first league game on August 17.

They emphasised the problems with antisocial behaviour had not been resolved, and plan to arrange a subsequent meeting with police.

Caldicot AFC members resolved to check the pitch thoroughly before every match by walking six abreast, so each can person can look at three square feet at a time. They estimated it would take four sweeps to cover the entire pitch.

As trustees of the playing fields, Caldicot Town Council have a mandate to ensure the fields remain open to the public. This prevents the pitch being closed when not in use by the club, and makes it difficult to bar youths from hanging around there.

In a statement to the council, Caldicot Town AFC said there were problems with youths “drinking and drug taking”, “causing criminal damage to the fencing, stand and shelters”, “starting fires” and “dropping, throwing and leaving litter”.

They said they had tried to reason with the teenagers, but their attempts were “met with indifference at best and increased vandalism at worst; they burnt the bins provided and set fires in the stand.”

But club members said in the statement that if the ban continued, the club would be in danger of going out of business.

Installing CCTV cameras near the club house was also raised as a possibility at the meeting, as well as more lighting near the stands which would allow disturbances to be picked up by the existing camera in Jubilee Way car park.

At the meeting, Frank Rowberry thanked councillors on behalf of Caldicot AFC for trying to find a resolution to the issue, “not just for the football club but for the people of Caldicot.”