Snooker star Shaun Murphy claims that his three woeful darts during the Paddy Power Perfect Challenge were an ‘obvious joke’.
Stars from snooker, darts and golf spent two hours gunning for a maximum 147 break, a nine-darter and a hole-in-one respectively to settle the age-old debate surrounding which feat is the most difficult.
Murphy claims to have done all three, and he was the only player from any of the three sports to achieve perfection during the livestream. But his skills completely deserted him when he stepped up to the oche, hitting a single four and missing the board twice despite claiming to have previously thrown nine perfect darts.
“I’ve been getting absolute pelters across social media,” Murphy told the onefourseven podcast. “It seems as if what I thought was an obvious joke hasn’t been picked up on.
“I haven’t played darts for nearly 15 years. Let me just point this out there, to be clear, I never claimed to be a really good darts player, ever. I used to play socially, once or twice a week in my old pub in Manchester when I lived up there a long time ago.
“Randomly, one night, using a set of Phil Taylor darts which he’d sent to me as a gift, I threw nine perfect darts. I think I followed it with 26, it was ridiculous.
“At the end of the challenge there was a lot of banter, TV crews, 50 people stood there watching. I’m totally out of my comfort zone, I’ve got a scorer who wants to watch me fail, I’ve got Mark Williams wanting to see me fail. [Michael] van Gerwen, one the best of all time, the current world champion Luke Humphries has given me his darts.
“I’ve thrown the first one, held onto it for a bit long and hit two, thrown the next one, gone for double something and missed that, then on purpose I’ve thrown it into the cardboard backing.
“It was totally on purpose, I thought it was funny. The marker nearly collapsed, because it finished about a foot from his head. I thought that was an obvious joke, but it wasn’t.”
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