The Victoria Sports & Social Club first came to fruition after a couple of mates banded together with the idea of having family orientated activities and events to support the community within a fun and cost-effective way.

From games of cricket, bowls, rallies to their renowned weekly raffles and monthly BBQs being had ever since the Club’s inception 59 years ago for their members and the public to enjoy.

“We just had our 59th AGM recently, on October 17, so we’ve been around for a while. We’re probably the longest standing club in Orange,” said Ian Thomas, the president of Victoria Sports & Social Club,

who has been a part of the organisation for 40 years.

The Club’s crown jewel, and perhaps what they’re most renowned for running, is the annual giant Christmas raffle with the 1st prize winner taking home thousands of dollars’ worth of items.

For 2021, the 1st prize includes a range of winnings from entertainment technologies, a plethora of camping gear, cooking appliances to kids toys and many other great goodies in-between.

“We try to cover a lot of different things to include into the prizes, adding items for the kids and we try to change it every year. It’s a great 1st prize when you see the list of things that are included.”

“We love supporting things like our Christmas raffle, we’ve been doing it ever since the Club began. Years ago we used to have a trailer for carrying the 1st prize around, but now since we’re getting a bit older, and the trailer was getting a bit heavier each year, we had to stop using it and now we use a large crate in the pub,” Ian laughs.

With many other raffles when you’re buying tickets, you’ve got to dish out $3 to $10 for tickets. With our raffle, you pay $1 for a ticket and you could win $4000 worth of items as the 1st prize.”

All of the prize items are bought by the Club and members, very little or no items are donated towards the raffle Ian stated. “We go and buy them ourselves, Leanne Foley and some of her mates have been doing the shopping for the raffle for us over the years too. They’ve done a great job in organising all of that for us this year since lockdown made it a bit more tricky in getting done.”

Other prizes, ten hams from local butcher shop, Woodward Street Quality Meats, are also up for grabs, as well as ten vouchers valued at $50 that Craig Wright from Victoria Hotel kindly provided.

For the chance to win the giant Christmas raffle, buy your tickets down at the Victoria Hotel or call (02) 6362 6386 for more information.