October 9, 2013
The South Burnett Community Orchestra has received a surprise gift courtesy of CROW-FM’s 2013 Community Rugby League Tipping Competition.
The popular football tipping competition has been running on the radio station “for a least five years, and probably longer” announcer Chris “Corky” Corcoran told this year’s winners at a small ceremony held at Kingaroy RSL tonight.
“CROW-FM invites different people to participate but when they sign up to give us their tips over the course of the season they also have to tell us which community organisation they want to donate their prizemoney to if they win.”
The competition offers a $2000 first prize, a $1000 second prize and $500 for third prize.
However this year there was an unexpected complication when the competition produced ties for 2nd and 3rd place. So the prize money for those places was split evenly between the winners.
The top tipster turned out to be Kingaroy resident Barry Krosch.
He surprised listeners by admitting he hadn’t even watched a footy match all season but said he’d been able to come out on top because of “a system” he was still fine tuning.
At the start of the season he’d nominated the South Burnett Community Orchestra as his beneficiary if he won.
“I get a lot of pleasure out of the community orchestra,” he said. “They’re as good as anything you’d hear in Brisbane and they provide first-class training for our region’s young musicians, too.”
Barry said that in addition to the $2000 first prize from CROW-FM, he was adding his own cheque for $3000 to the gift.
“I’ve done pretty well put of the footy this year,” he said. “I also won Kingaroy RSL’s tipping competition so the proceeds of that are going to the Community Orchestra, too.”
SBCO President Andrew Maddern told the audience that $2000 would pay for the Orchestra’s sheet music for the coming 12 months but the extra $3000 would assist the group to undertake some travelling as well.
“We really appreciate everyone’s generosity,” he said. “Thank you very much indeed.”
The second prize in the competition was split between GJ Gardner Homes (who gave their $500 cheque to the RSL Cricket Club) and Bendigo Bank, who gave their money to the Mayor’s Charity Trust.
Third prize was split between X-Ray Kingaroy (Mayor’s Charity Trust) and the Warana Hotel-Motel Eatery who gave their $250 cheque to the Mt McEuen Rural Fire Brigade.
Darren Geiger from the RSL Cricket Club thanked GJ Gardner Homes and said the money would be used to assist junior cricketers this season.
Robyn Zelinski, the former operator of the Warana Hotel-Motel Eatery, said she was amazed that she had won a prize as she “didn’t even understand footy” but she was sure the Mt McEuen Rural Fire Brigade would appreciate their gift.
Corky also put in a special word of thanks to CROW-FM admin assistant Chantal Harth who ran the tipping competition throughout the season.
“She was the one who had to ring up anyone who was late and then put all the scores together. All I had to do was have fun on the Breakfast Show reading them out. She did a really terrific job,” he said.
