Last updated at 17:23, Friday, 08 February 2013

BARROW Raiders will launch the biggest part of their floodlighting fund drive on Sunday as they kick-off a huge prize draw hoped to raise more than £35,000.

The Floodlight Appeal Grand Raffle will offer 40,000 tickets with the chance to win two weeks in a Florida Gulf Coast villa with a private pool and two flights.

Club chairman David Sharpe will speak to the crowd ahead of this weekend’s Championship fixture against Doncaster, urging them to back the initiative and help replace the ageing lighting system at Craven Park.

Barrow Raiders lottery promoter John Spoor, who has organised the scheme to raise much of the needed £100,000 for the lights, said: “We will ask every supporter if they can buy one book and sell another – two books each – then we will easily sell those 40,000 tickets.

“There is very little in the way of overheads, so if we do sell all those tickets, then we will have made more than a third of the target for the floodlights – we should be looking at £37,000.

“I am very hopeful, because we have all summer to sell them – the draw’s not made until the last game of the season on September 1 – and there’s a really good prize as well.

“If every supporter can buy one book, and they could even do it at £1 a week, and sell another, that would be well over 2,000 books and we would be on our way to raising a lot of money. This will be the single-biggest fundraiser for the floodlight appeal and, if we sell all the tickets, it will be more than a third of what we need.”

Season-tickets holders have already been given books of tickets, while supporters will be able to pick them up from Sunday’s game, from the souvenir stall or the Raiders Bar, or from the Rugby Shop, on Scott Street.

As well as the first prize of the stay in a Florida villa, other prizes already confirmed include a Raiders 2014 season ticket – with a match-day hospitality box for one game – with further donations accepted to John Spoor at the Rugby Shop.

First published at 16:46, Friday, 08 February 2013
Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk