DARTS fans were given an early Christmas present with a thrilling match at Alexandra Palace in London, with Tyrone’s own Mickey Mansell losing out to Jonny Clayton in a sudden-death tie-breaker.
Mansell’s well-executed escape act saved him a few time during the match, but despite his Welsh opponent missing three match shots, the ‘Clonoe Cyclone’ eventually came undone and walked away from the Oche second-best.
Mansell’s was the last match in the afternoon session of the last day of Darts before the Christmas break, and you could hear the festive spirit coming from the fans as he and Jonny ‘The Ferrett’ Clayton stepped on stage.
The ‘Clonoe Cyclone’ took the first set after his purple patch of finishing helped him to overcome the tough challenge of Clayton, who hails from Llanelli.
In the second set, Clayton made a comeback and took the set after a rare botched finish from Mansell before the Welshman took the third set to make it a shaky time for the Co Tyrone man.
Mansell took the fourth set and made sure that the battle between these two great darts players would go to the wire.
In the fifth set, Mansell’s 154 finish in the second leg was met with rapturous applause as the Clonoe native seemed to be on the ropes but dug himself out of a hole to go two legs up.
Clayton’s instant 180 reply kept the energy up in the ‘Ally Pally’ and ‘The Ferrett’ took the leg to make Mansell work for his win.
Clayton took the game to a tie-breaker situation, with each player now needing a two-leg lead to end the game. The number-seven-seed Clayton refused to go quietly.
In the tie-breaker, neither player could be separated, with Clayton having three chances to win it and Mansell having one chance, but all were missed and the game went to at sudden-death leg.
Clayton took the game with a double-five shot which was met with a roar of relief as well as joy, even the players could be seen marvelling at the match that they had just played as Clayton commiserated Mansell who came so close to progressing to the last 32.
Josh ‘Rocky’ Rock took his match against Rhys Griffin in straight sets to book his place in round three against Chris Dobey and to break into the World’s top 16.
Rock took the first set after his opponent Rhys Griffin failed to take a few opportunities in what was a cagey first set.
Both players had a few triple-less trips to the oche at ‘Ally Pally’ but it was the Antrim man who managed to come out on top going into the first break.
Griffin and Rock provided more of a show for the packed-out pre-Christmas crowd at the famous London Darts venue.
The Broughshane native took the set 3-2 after a more comfortable Griffin managed to take it to the final game, before the Llanbradach man busted his score and Rock took full advantage to take the set with a double-16 dart.
In the final set, Griffin seemed to have resigned himself to his fate as he felt that he was going through the motions against Rock, who with his win pushed his way into the World’s top-16 rankings.
In the second leg, Rock got the crowd going after setting up a nine-dart finish, only for his first dart on his third visit to deflate the fans, one of whom would have won £60,000 if ‘Rocky’ had finished the nine-darter.
The prize money pot for a nine-dart finish at this year’s World Darts Championship is £180,000, which is split three-ways between a random fan in attendance, the charity Prostate Cancer UK and the player who threw the finish.
