PUB RAFFLES



This has been done from memory only, so there are sure to be many others that, over the years, have helped Joe Williams and later Bill Crisp at firstly, the Coronation Hotel and later on the Terminius Hotel.

It would have been about 1965 that Joe, Ray Smith & Crispo first approached Noel Hayes the Publican at the Coronation if the club could have a few Friday nights to raffle meat trays at the pub, at that time the Tugun Life Savers raffled for 6 months of the year and Souths Rugby Union raffled for the other 6 months of the year.

When we first approached Noel, he decided to take 4 weeks off Tugun and 4 weeks off Souths Rugby Union club, and that’s how the Squash Club meat raffles started. As most of us had never been involved in running pub raffles , some of us went down a couple of weeks before we started and were shown the finer points of running meat raffles in pubs, by both Des College from Tugun and Chipsy Wood from Souths Rugby Union Club.

For a few years we raffled at the Coronation, but later when most of the members decided they would rather drink Castlemaine rather than Bulimba we switched to having our after squash thirst quenchers at the Terminius, which was down the other end of Hope Street.

We then approached the Publican of the Terminius Hotel Pat McMahon, to see if we could grab a few weeks of the year on Friday nights, he wanted to keep faith with the clubs that were already raffling there, and decided to let the Squash Club raffle on Sundays in the first session for the whole year. Pat became a member of the club and played in home matches only, as he didn’t want to leave the pub for the whole night if he was playing away.

Pat won the plate event of the first Seniors Tournament the club held; Pat defeated our President Col Brandon Snr in the final.

I am not sure how much longer the club raffled after they moved to the Gabba it was definitely a couple of years, the members were doing most of their after squash drinking at the club when they moved to the Gabba, even though the club were still buying the stubbies from Pat the pub ceased to be the main place to have a drink after squash.

Some of the early helpers at the Coronation were, Joe Williams Bill Crisp, Laurie Pashley, Reg Ryan, Terry Kelly, Ray Smith, Peter Land, Peter Skelly, Bob Turner, Peter Prickett, Ian McDonald, Ron Baranoff, Peter Simpson George Nuss, John Mather and I am sure there were others.

When the club started raffling at the Terminius, Crispo took over organising the pub raffles. And over the years he recruited many more helpers, some of whom were Peter Creevey, Alf Hogan, Bob Ford, Ron Pearce, Don Chilcott, Bob McCormick, Kev Mahoney, Jeff Siepel, Terry Watt and Russell McConnell and as I said above I am sure there would have been many others.

I remember when we first started raffling at the Terminus, we were allowed to raffle 20 meat trays, and we could have finished the raffles in about an hour if we wanted to, because the tickets sold so quickly, but Pat asked Bill if he could spread the raffles over the two hours the pub was open, as a lot of the Sunday drinkers would have walked down to their own watering holes to finish the session, because of the meat raffles some of the locals at South Brisbane used to spend the first session at the Terminius. Pat normally put on a few free jugs for the club members that run the raffles.

I remember when we started raffling at the Terminius, some of the customers used to ask Bill for the same number in each raffle and normally come up and pay for their numbers before the raffles started. Bill used to either do it himself during the week or delegate some one to staple all the same numbers together and give them to whoever asked for that number, Bill had a master sheet with all the preordered numbers marked off and who they were for, some days there was only about 10 numbers in each raffle that had to be sold.

I think Bill had a rule that if any regular ticket buyer had not collected his or hers numbers before they started selling the numbers that were preordered were not paid for were sold, but it was amazing that if a regular knew he was not coming in or maybe coming in a bit later, his money was either given to Bill, Joe or Alf during the week or one of his or her mates passed on the money

I think we used to sell 80 numbers in each meat tray, in the finish when the cost of meat went up a bit, Bill had a yarn to the regulars and asked them if they would rather we sold a few more tickets in each raffle or put the price of the tickets up, most of the regulars said it was ok to sell a few more tickets, I think from memory Bill organised 100 tickets to be printed for each raffle, and that worked out ok for people that didn’t want to buy all the same number, and didn’t come down every Sunday, it gave them a better chance of getting a ticket,

But all the same there wasn’t a lot of yelling out and taking the tickets around by the sellers, because after each raffle the customers used to keep Bill and Alf busy and just come down to the corner were they were selling and grab a ticket in case the sellers never got to them.

Over the years the pub raffles would have been a steady source of revenue for the club, and it probably saved the Committee Members organising raffles and getting members to sell tickets to their friends. Though over the years the club did hold some major raffles, when TV was still a novelty they used to hold raffles for a TV set now and again, but these tickets used to sell themselves.