Newcastle United stars are used to signing shirts and footballs but a Jarrow school had an unusual request that the team couldn't turn down.
Children from St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School wrote a letter to Newcastle United asking the players to draw a self-portrait that they could raffle to raise money for the school. The novel idea seemed to be a hit with the squad, with nine players including Allan Saint-Maximin, Dan Burn and Jonjo Shelvey sending in their signed drawings.
Sean Longstaff, Matt Ritchie, Dwight Gayle, Karl Darlow, and Jacob Murphy also took the time to send in a hand-drawn picture to the delight of the children at the school.
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Headteacher Paul Craig, said: “We thought we might get something back from one or two players, but we were over the moon to receive responses from nine different players. Allan Saint-Maximin also gave us a pair of his boots, so we raffled them and raised £430, before we started raffling the pictures.
“The raffle got picked up on Twitter by a number of Newcastle United fan groups and so far, for Jonjo Shelvey’s picture, we’ve sold 160 tickets at £1 each – and I’ve estimated 50% of the ticket sales have come from people who’ve seen it on Twitter and are not connected with the school.”
A maximum of 200 tickets will be sold for each drawing and the raffle for Jonjo Shelvey’s picture will be drawn on Friday, September 30. A different picture will be sold each week for the next eight weeks and all the money raised will go towards science resources for the school.
“I think the players are used to signing footballs and shirts and this is something a little bit different,” headteacher Paul said.
"It’s an exciting thing for the children to be involved with and they will benefit in the form of enhanced science lessons using high-quality resources, for things like pond dipping in our community garden. We also want to buy some wellies so that the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) children can go outdoors in all weathers.”
The school hopes that Sunderland AFC, the Lionesses and other North East celebrities will also donate pictures.
Paul said: "When we put the request in, we thought maybe one or two would do it, so the fact we got a lot more than that was great. We would like to thank everyone who has supported us so far.”
Enter the draw for the portrait of Sean Longstaff here.
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