Football: Raith help punter to jackpot

A gambler from Bournemouth won pounds 292,000 after Raith beat Airdrie 4-1 in the Tennents Scottish Cup third round last night.

It was the successful culmination of a pounds 10 13-match accumulator bet with Ladbrokes at Moordown in the south coast resort, with the previous 12 winning games all having taken place on Saturday, when Portsmouth, Birmingham, Queen's Park Rangers, Ipswich, Blackpool, Manchester City, Wycombe, Brighton, Fulham, Crewe, Motherwell and Gillingham all came up trumps.

A Ladbrokes spokesman, Ian Wassall, said: "We don't know who he is and until he comes to claim his money we won't know whether he wants publicity or not. It's a fantastic effort and although it's costing us a lot of money, we have to say fair play to him."

Raith trailed 1-0 at half-time, but hit four second-half goals for a comfortable victory.

Wassall believes the bet is a world record in terms of the number of correctly predicted fixtures. "It's not a world record in terms of prize- money, but we certainly think it is for the number of winners he got right," he added. "It's the biggest we can ever remember.

"If he wants to make himself known to us, then we will make some sort of presentation to him. He is a very clever chap."