Sun, 06 Sep 2026 05:02:34 -0700WeeblySat, 05 Sep 2026 09:32:39 GMThttps://www.annmassey.com/blog/september-05th-2026
​Back in 1985, when I was Marketing Manager of Perth’s Daily News, I dreamed up a competition that seemed like a wonderful idea at the time.Readers had to predict the winners of three major sporting events: the FA Cup Final, Wimbledon men’s singles and the British Grand Prix. The prize was a trip to England, plus a ticket to one of the events.

Thousands of entries poured in—which was excellent news for newspaper sales. There was just one small problem.Somebody had to open all those envelopes.
That somebody was me.

After each sporting event, I went through the entries, discarded all the losing predictions and carefully kept those still in contention. Then I did it all over again after the next result. Eventually, amazingly, just one person had correctly predicted all three winners: Manchester United, Boris Becker and Alain Prost.
Wonderful! We had our winner.

​He initially told us he was delighted with the trip to England and didn’t want a ticket to any of the sporting events. I breathed a sigh of relief. The next day he changed his mind.
He wanted Wimbledon.

Fortunately, before launching the competition, I had obtained an assurance from our News Editor that he could get tickets.Unfortunately, since making that promise, he had fallen out with management, departed the Daily News in high dudgeon and joined another newspaper. I telephoned him. He wasn’t feeling helpful.
​
I tried every avenue I could think of to obtain a complimentary Wimbledon ticket. Nothing worked.
So, for the first time in my career, I had to buy a prize that I had promised in a newspaper promotion.

Looking back, there’s a certain irony to it all. After opening thousands of envelopes and eliminating entry after entry, finding our winner turned out to be the easy part.
Finding his Wimbledon ticket was much harder.
​
And I never ran a competition like that again.

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