Walsall school children get extra surprise after footballers come to deliver match tickets

Tommy Simkin and Jamie Jellis made the visit to Castle School in Leamore as part of the School Partners ticket initiative, an initiative by the Walsall FC Foundation which offers local schools tickets at one-off reduced prices to encourage the next generation of fans. 

They signed autographs, posed for pictures and generally interacted with the pupils as part of the visit.

The ticket initiative sees pupils and parents able to take advantage of either two ticket for £5, four tickets for £10 or six tickets for £15, with the Foundation then delivering tickets out to the schools and the club, foundation and schools all getting a portion of the proceedings raised.

The Foundation said that a record-breaking 1888 tickets, which matches the year the club was founded, have been sold through local schools for Saturday's game vs Crewe Alexandra, with 46 schools taking part.

Castle pupils have ordered the most of any school with 104 so, as a reward, the Foundation also gave the school an extra 20 tickets for the game at the Banks's Stadium vs Barrow in December.

Foundation education manager Joe Roberts said the players had been brought in to deliver the tickets and also give the children a nice treat.

He said: "We went to Castle because they sold the most tickets, so part of the prize was the extra tickets for the Barrow game, but we thought it would be a good idea to get the players down to present the tickets to the pupils.

"It was a nice way of giving the pupils the chance to meet the players and have the interaction with them before they go to see them on Saturday.

"The kids were really excited because it was something very different for them due to the school being a special needs school and it's not something they will normally get, so we showed them a few goals by Jamie, which really impressed them and they were asking who scored, so he stood up and said it was him and they got really excited."