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This amazing raffle story sums up lower league football

"Get well soon James!"

This amazing raffle story sums up lower league football

It's not easy being the fan of a lower league football club.

Your team is, more likely than not, going to disappoint you, fans of bigger teams will taunt your relative lack of success, the food is (usually) terrible and there's a good chance that your owners will try and asset-strip you before too long. But you're loyal, and you love the club, so what can you do?

But this incredible tale of a raffle held by League One team Chesterfield really does take the biscuit.

The club ran a raffle, offering one lucky fan the chance to join the team on their preseason tour of Hungary. Before long, something about the whole thing seemed rather fishy.

We'll leave it to Spireites fan Jonno Turner to explain how things panned out...

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The club did at least react fairly swiftly, with a statement made by Chesterfield director & company secretary Ashley Carson earlier today:

"After a thorough internal investigation, I can now confirm that the person responsible for this total farce has now left the football club.

Kevin Fitzgerald has been a hardworking, respected, likeable employee who has, for some reason, made a massive error of judgement and has subsequently paid the consequences for his actions. The board were unaware of his actions and have taken swift action after uncovering the truth.

I do hope that we can look for a replacement to head our commercial department, move forward and pick up the pieces from the whole sorry mess.

Finally, I want to confirm that all other lotteries/raffles run by the club, which are so valuable to providing funds, are in no way affected by this isolated incident."