Football club apologises after four-entry raffle has fake winner

Chesterfield Football Club is involved in perhaps one of the worst raffles of all time. Photo / iStock.

Chesterfield Football Club in England isn't a small fry by any means.

Playing in Football League One, the third tier of English football, with a stadium that holds 10,000, their biggest claim to fame is a semifinal appearance in the 1997 FA Cup.

However, a recent blunder in a club raffle looks like a story out of your local Sunday league.

Offering one keen supporter a paid trip to Hungary for the team's preseason camp, "Surrey-based Spireite James Higgins" was declared the winner.

There was a problem however. James Higgins was "too ill" to travel.

That was according to an article on the club's website which was quickly deleted.

Turns out Surrey-based James Higgins doesn't actually exist and now the club has launched a full investigation into the "falsified claim".

But was it just a ploy from the club to avoid paying out the prize?

What makes the story even worse is the fact club director Ashley Carson had to apologise to each and every raffle entry. All four of them.

In a 20 pound raffle, for a trip to Hungary, with a club that averages 6000 attendees per game, there was just four entries.

In any case, it could go down as one of the worst raffles ever and the club was left feeling slightly red-faced.