Edinburgh football club cleans up vandalised memorial bench at Lochend Park
The club’s chair Ian Fergus said he had not seen any other acts of vandalism in the park over the last 17 years
A local football team has cleaned up a vandalised memorial bench at one of the city’s “unsung” parks.
Under 16s coach at Lochend Football Academy Mirek Bacowicz readily volunteered to remove the purple spray paint that appeared on items around Lochend Park, including a bench dedicated to “Mother and Granny” Lorraine Currie.
The club’s chair Ian Fergus, who asked the painter and volunteer coach for help removing the damage, called the incident a “shock occurrence”.
Mr Fergus said: “We've never had any vandalism in the 17 years that we've been here.
“It was a random act of stupidity. I don't think it's been really wickedly done or that would have been a lot worse, I think it's just been something that's happened with immaturity.”
The 58-year-old started the club in 2010 with facilities manager Jimmy Urquhart and said they have been trying to help out in the community and keep their part of the “great little park” tidy since they started.
He admitted that the club is “very fortunate” for volunteers like Mr Bacowicz, without which they “wouldn’t exist”.
As well as weekly litter picks, Lochend FA oversees a number of boys and girls youth teams and has reached the U14 and U16 Scottish Youth FA Cup finals earlier this year.
“It's not a huge giant organisation, but just a community club that does its best in the area dwarfed by bigger clubs who do good work as well,” the club chair said.
Alongside the memorial bench, Mr Bacowicz also restored a nearby utility cabinet as well as a vandalised bin that had been “set on fire mindlessly”.
When Mr Fergus returned to clean up the rest of the vandalism, he found the council’s graffiti team cleaning up the remaining spray paint on the tarmac and the stone.
The council have now provided the team with a free graffiti removal kit to help with their efforts and the chair said he “cannae applaud them enough” for quickly coming down to fix the issue when the club posted about their clean-up job.