LOTTERY scratch card winners will have to wait more than a month before they can collect their money under a cashout restriction.

New operator Allwyn has changed the procedure for winnings between £500 and £50,000.

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Post offices were the only shops where checks for these amounts could be given to winning punters – but they have now been blocked.

Instead, the operator, which took over from Camelot early last month, insists that winners verify their numbers online or over the phone before sending the ticket in the mail for inspection.

But winners like John Farrugia, 69, are waiting up to six weeks for their payouts.

The retired builder is struggling to get his £800 from two tickets, and said: “I am being taken around the departments when I call to try to exchange the money I have won fairly.”

The crackdown may have been caused by a wave of false claims made to Camelot using dodgy tickets in convenience stores.

Allwyn tells the winners that they want to have tickets sent in for review by the security team.

It also wants official ID and photos of the winners.

But John, from Sutton, Surrey, added: “For a lot of older people it is difficult.”

Allwyn was contacted for comment.

A HUNGRY husband's sandwich cravings have led to his family winning a life-changing lotto jackpot.

The prize-winning couple couldn't believe their luck after initially thinking they only had £6 in their pockets.

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Nigel Frater couldn't wait any longer after licking his lips at the thought of his favorite sarnie – a Tesco's Pigs in Blankets cap – and decided to head to Tesco to buy one.

He was accompanied by his wife, Rebecca, 54, and they shot to their local branch in Ingleby Barwick, Stockton, to bag the meaty treat, reports TeessideLive.

When they got there – and perused the store's sarnie selection with great care – Rebecca spotted some Jolly 7s National Lottery scratch cards and bought a few to take home and hand out to the family for some extra fun on the day.

Rebecca said: “It always adds a little extra excitement and anticipation and it's great fun to see everyone scratching their scratch cards.

“We agreed at the beginning of the dinner that we would scratch them all at once and if anyone won, we would share the prize.”

After scratching out six of the cards, they had won a total of £6 – and thought that was the end of their luck.

My son thought it was just a trick, but I knew it had to be true.

Rebecca Frater

But the very last scratch card to be chiselled fell into the hands of Rebecca's mother-in-law, Kathleen, 76.

Thomas Warrington, 28, the couple's son, his girlfriend Chloe Mennell, 30, Isaac Frater, 21, the couple's son, Rebecca's sister, Angela Lathan, 62, and Kathleen couldn't believe what the scratch card showed them.

Rebecca continued: “When my mother-in-law finally scratched her scratch card, she had a look of complete confusion on her face.

“She said, 'I don't understand this, I have a seven? What does this mean?' We quickly realized that this meant we had won the grand prize.

“My son thought it was just a trick, but I knew it had to be true. The whole moment, when I think back on it now, was just quite surreal.”

Knowing they had just won the top prize – £100,000 – they ran as fast as they could to the shop to confirm the win, and jumped for joy when they heard the “sound” that every lotto player wants to hear when he gets his hand in scratch cards.

COCKTAILS ALL

After realizing they had won the prize, they all started planning how they would celebrate the win, and Rebecca's daughter-in-law Chloe – who “doesn't drink” – wanted to celebrate the occasion with a cocktail.

Rebecca said it was 'all champagne and cocktails' as they started celebrating – and said the win was down to her hungry husband's sandwich cravings.

She explained: “We don't normally go to Tesco but Nigel had seen their special Pigs in Blanket sandwich and was really keen to try it.

“The Jolly 7s Scratch Card caught my eye so I bought a selection of these for Christmas dinner.

“If we hadn't gone to Tesco that day for a festive sarnie, we wouldn't have bought the scratch cards and we certainly wouldn't be celebrating being a £100,000 winner today.”

Rebecca was already thinking about what to buy and said she had her eye on a Mulberry bag she saw in New York, where she had recently visited.

And Hubby Nigel bought a top of the line set of bowls.

OTHER WINNERS

Rebecca isn't the only person to have had a bit of financial luck in recent months, as this woman has made a whopping £86,000 from a lottery ticket she found while clearing out her house.

And less than a week ago a retired foster mother deposited £83,000 into the People's Postcode Lottery,

Susan Dodds, 66, who is also a former hospital worker, said she was looking forward to updating her Whitley Bay home of 40 years.

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There are a RANGE of big changes coming to the National Lottery that could reduce your chances of winning.

Camelot, who has been in charge since 1994, will be replaced by Allwyn, chosen by the Gaming Commission.

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The Feb. 1 transfer marks the first time the lottery has changed hands since its launch nearly 30 years ago.

It is said to introduce a host of different rules, but promises to “revive” the draw as the number of winners dwindles.

Allwyn's UK boss Andria Vidler took over the company last October and confirmed the group won't be able to make many of the bigger changes until next year.

However, there will be new scratch cards and a marketing push around the games, with a new Lotto advertising campaign from February.

But one rule in particular surprised players, as it could limit their chances of winning.

From February 1, punters will be unable to purchase more than 10 online at a time.

There will be incremental changes every month in the first year, so that by the time the entire technology transition is complete, much more will be visible.”

Andria VidlerAllwyn's British boss

This will be extended to stores across the UK later this year, in the hope of “deterring vulnerable people from indulging”, Ms Vidler explains.

There will also be a review of some of the lottery's retail in-store kits in 2024, with plans to test these at a small number of retailers next month.

A new and improved kit will be rolled out to 50 stores at the end of March, with a full transformation in the autumn.

NEW FOCUS

The group's new marketing campaign will initially focus on its individual draw-based games.

They hope to launch new scratch cards initiatives with the idea of ​​making it a trend to give them as gifts.

Ms Vidler said Allwyn has looked to international markets for ideas.

New products can even be scratch card advent calendars, as we see in the Netherlands.

“There will be incremental changes every month in the first year, so that by the time the whole technology transition is complete, much more will be visible,” Ms Vilder added.

BIG CHANGES

The company also announced that its original pledge to halve the price of a lottery ticket from £2 to £1 is being revised.

Long-awaited plans for new draw-based games have also been postponed until 2025.

This will impact sales and limit the amount of money it can give to charities in the first part of its ten-year license.

Ms Vidler said the group is trying to ensure that money for charities does not 'go backwards' this year, but that this funding is directly affected by sales growth.

She said players would not notice any “Big Bang changes” from day one, adding that the delays to new games were a “result of the legal issues”.

It comes as the National Lottery's Andy Carter said luxury holidays are the most popular treat for jackpot winners.

“I have met many winners over the years and dream holidays are always at the top of the National Lottery wish list after winning a life-changing prize,” he explained.

Andy advised people to go on holiday, especially after raking in more than £100 million, “to let the victory sink in”.

He added: “We all use breaks as a time to reflect and with a new huge bank balance you need that time.”

NATIONAL LOTTERY WINNERS HOLIDAY PLANS 2024

• Australia – 25%
• Disney World Florida – 16%
• The Northern Lights in Iceland – 8%
• Safari experience in South Africa – 8%
• Spain – 8%
• Mexico – 4%
• Vegas – 4%
• Netherlands – 4%
• Lapland – 4%
• Dubai – 4%
• Italy – 4%
• Japan – 4%

There may come a time when Leylah Fernandez and Emma Raducanu enter the draw for a major tournament and one name does not immediately follow the other into the tennis consciousness.

Maybe, but not yet.

One of them is working her way up and down and up again on the ever-changing ladder of professional women's tennis.

The other struggled for a year and a half to string together wins, then called it a season and underwent three surgeries — on each wrist and one of her ankles — on a grim day last spring. It didn't take long for the other to realize that she also needed to press her own career restart button.

One is the daughter of financial managers, the product of a Chinese father and a Romanian mother, raised in Britain with many advantages and the chance to choose between the best universities if she had taken that path.

The other grew up in Canada and then on the hot hard courts of Florida, driven by desire and her father, a former Ecuadorian soccer player, to earn a living with a tennis racket.

Besides the fact that Emma Raducanu and Leylah Fernandez were born nine weeks apart in Canada, they don't have much in common. They are nothing more than professional acquaintances.

Inevitably, they will always be more than that and always connected because of that magical fortnight just over two years ago, when they were teenagers starring together in the most bizarre Grand Slam tennis tournament ever will ever happen. When almost three weeks of competition were over, Raducanu, a relative unknown outside Britain, had won ten straight matches, including the qualifying tournament, and twenty sets, beating Fernandez, the 73rd ranked player in the world but the second highest player in the world. unlikely finalist that day, for the championship.

Since then, there has been a lot of frustration for both of them. Hard losses and early exits, hard lessons about life in the spotlight and a series of injuries that sometimes felt like they would never end. Raducanu in particular has looked particularly miserable in every tournament and defeat, especially in the last few months when she played in constant pain.

But here they are in Melbourne this week, in the second round either side of the draw, busy with the next phase of their tennis lives at an age when most players are still trying to sink their teeth into the former.

For the 21-year-old Raducanu, that meant a first-round victory over American veteran Shelby Rogers on Tuesday night that was as solid as it needed to be. Rogers, 31, was looking for form after a six-month layoff due to injury, but for long stretches Raducanu displayed so much of the style that sent her to those lofty heights: the easy, deceptively quick movements, the low, whippy and curling power from the ground, even a feathered backhand drop shot and, most importantly, the ability not to beat himself with careless mistakes.

The final score was 6-3, 6-2 and it wasn't that close. More of that and Raducanu will soon be much higher than 296th in the world rankings.

“All aspects of my life have been calming down and calming down,” Raducanu said. “When you come back after eight months and have had three operations, you are just very grateful that you can move freely.”

This all happened a few days after Fernandez won one of the first matches of the tournament, a straight sets victory over Sara Bejlek of the Czech Republic. Sure, Bejlek was just a 17-year-old qualifier, but this was a different Fernandez who not only stayed in the points and chased balls into the corners like she always has, but also sprinted to the net to finish them like that she has rarely done it before.

“I can't always be a powerhouse or just a returner,” Fernandez said as she sat in a soft chair in the Melbourne Park hallway moments after her match. “Everyone on tour is a grinder. You see the top players, they run for every ball.”

For Fernandez, the restart came just after the French Open after her three-set loss in the second round, a winnable match against world number 127 Clara Tauson of Denmark. Even when Fernandez and Taylor Townsend reached the doubles final at Roland Garros, her father suggested they hold a formal meeting to discuss her future. Her singles ranking was about to drop to 95, her lowest since 2020.

He told her she could listen to 100 percent of what he was going to say and finish the season in the top 20, or less than 100 percent and maybe finish in the top 40.

“Of course I didn't listen to him 100 percent,” she said. “That comes with maturity and I own that.”

But she listened a lot to what he told her and signed off on his plan to start all over again with a mini preseason in the weeks leading up to Wimbledon, occasionally leaving the rackets on the side of the court and concentrating on her condition. She had been one of the fastest players in the game, but had somehow become slower, or the game had become faster, with women advancing more or playing drop shots taking time away from her.

She needed to be faster for longer and the only way to do that was to build up endurance.

“You see Novak Djokovic every year, he tries to improve something,” said Fernandez, who faces American Alycia Parks in the second round. “He changed his whole diet. He started with yoga. It's very simple. The basics of an athlete's body. We wanted to see what we can improve in my fitness, because if my fitness is high and I am confident in it, then my game will follow.”

Her summer, which included a mini-preseason after Wimbledon, was up and down, including a first-round loss at the US Open. In September she played qualifying matches, but in October she won the Hong Kong Open and then reached the semifinals of the Jiangxi Open.

It's taken a while, but 21-year-old Fernandez is finally starting to experience all the attention and crowds that have followed her since the 2021 US Open as support rather than pressure.

“It just took time to understand what was happening,” she said, “to understand what I was feeling and work through that… just finding ways to get back to the little girl who would just want to get on the field and hit and to beat. and have fun and put on a show for everyone.

Raducanu wants to do that too. She said she was shocked to see thousands of fans packing the cozy 1573 Arena as she walked onto the field. She tried not to focus on a possible outcome, which could have gone either way in just three games of her comeback, and that will have to be her life for now.

“The difference between losing the first round and doing really well in a tournament is very small,” she said. “It's just in the way I move, in the way I do things physically. Not that drastic I would say, because I know it's not far off at all. The more I practice consistently, it will surface.”

She lingered long after the win, basking in the adulation, signing autographs and posing for selfies all around the stadium, as her restart was now officially underway. The next step for Raducanu is a second round against China's Yafan Wang.

“The time I was away made me very hungry,” Raducanu said. “I'm just happy to be healthy and pain-free again.”

(Top photo: James D Morgan/Getty Images)

By Richard Eden for The Daily Mail

Published: 9:24 PM EDT, November 3, 2023 | Updated: 9:24 PM EDT, November 3, 2023

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