A football club manager has hit out at vandals who torched its changing rooms.
Chris Arif, who manages Castle Point United, spoke after a blaze gutted a mobile building used by youngsters at the Haven Road football pitch on Canvey.
Chris, 32, said: "It is very upsetting. It is a real shame hooligans feel they can come along and just destroy something like this.
"It is terrible when you think the people who did this probably go to school with the people who use the pitch. Now boys will have to change in their parents' cars or outside and get cold and wet."
The dad-of-one added: "I used these changing rooms when I was about nine and I wanted my son to use them when he starts playing.
"I would like to see the changing rooms rebuilt but if they were they would have to be secured with bars on the windows so people could not damage them."
Upset - Chris Arif surveys the charred remains of his club's changing rooms
Picture: ROBIN WOOSEY
Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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