Aaron Cresswell emerged as the king of the oche amongst the Town players at last night’s Legends of Darts event at Greshams.
Cresswell, team-mates Tyrone Mings, Stephen Hunt, Daryl Murphy and Paul Taylor and ex-Blues Bryan Hamilton, Allan Hunter, Fabian Wilnis and Jack Ainsley joined Town-supporting darts stars Kevin Painter and Keith Deller at the event which raised several thousand pounds for the Academy Association.
"It was really good, we had 230 people there,” academy sponsorship manager Simon Milton told TWTD. "The lads bought into it, played and had a bit of fun.
"We had a nine-dart challenge involving all the Ipswich Town boys and Cressy won that.
"He won a dartboard, a darts shirt, some really good quality darts and just walked over and gave them all to Josh Blunden, the 12-year-old son of Jason Blunden, whose company Evolve Financial Solutions sponsored the event.
"It was a really nice thing to do. We’d already given the boy a pair of Cressy’s boots earlier in the night but that was completely unexpected.”
Milton said the two darts pros got into the spirit of the evening: "Keith and Kevin were absolutely fantastic. They were playing with players, ex-players and sponsors. They brought along a guy called Russ Bray, who is a proper darts announcer. He was absolutely fantastic.
"He knew exactly how to do all the scoring, get the boys going and have a bit of fun with the people coming up. He was the co-compare and he was an absolute star.
"We also did a thing where there was a player and a sponsor doing a 12-dart challenge and that was won by Fabian Wilnis, the Flying Dutchman, and Stuart King.
"We got Fabian in as the current world champion, Michael van Gerwen, is Dutch but he didn’t think that was going to help him much!”
The next big Academy Association fundraising event is the Team ITFC London to Amsterdam Cycling Challenge.
Milton and Alan Lee will be amongst those taking part and the duo are looking for fans to join them. Full details on the Academy Association website.
Photos: ITFC