By Mikayla van Loon
Forty years after winning multiple national and international titles, Seville East’s Andy Robinson has been inducted into the Darts Australia Hall of Fame.
Attending the Australian Championships in Echuca in early August, Andy was surprised by the presentation having not been told it was coming.
“I didn’t know anything about it until we got there,” he said.
Over the last year, Andy has been helping his son Chris collate all the information, trophies and title wins, knowing he’d done much the same as other Hall of Fame inductees.
“A lot of dart players we know have done exactly the same as what I’ve done but they’d got into the Hall of Fame so we started backtracking and looking through everything,” Andy said.
Chris said the Hall of Fame process begins at a local level with the Melbourne Darts League having to put in a request to the Victorian Darts Council, before it’s sent to Darts Australia.
“Then they have to put it out to three members around Australia and they all have to be unanimous in their decision making, so it took at least nine months,” Chris said.
Having played darts as a young lad in his home country, England, Andy said it started out as just a bit of fun with friends, especially with nearly every pub having a dartboard.
Coming to Australia in the ‘60s, Andy said it took him quite some time to get back into playing.
“When I came out here, I put my darts in a case and said ‘that’s it, I’m not playing again’ and for about four or five years you couldn’t even find a place with a dartboard,” he said.
Once darts picked up in Australia, Andy got back into the game and began to amaze with his talent, which he put down to practice and arrhythmic.
“I won the league championship and then it just kept on going, Victorian champion, Australian champion with a lot of tournaments in between, just for the love of darts,” Andy said.
Travelling not only all over Australia but around the world to represent the country, Andy became a well known name in the darts community, winning numerous titles.
Representing Victoria and Australia across the ‘70s and ‘80s, Andy’s decade long darts career saw him play in the Six Nations Championship in the UK, the 1981 World Cup in New Zealand, have consecutive singles title wins at the Australian Masters in ‘81 and ‘82, as well as win the Peter Jackson Australian Open in 1984.
He also came runner up in the Pacific Masters, Australian Masters and Australian Grand Masters over five years.
Another claim to his name is beating the world champion at the time, Leighton Rees, in 1978 in the opening round of Australia versus Wales.
“I loved every minute. Just travelling around and meeting different people from all over the world.”
The Hall of Fame induction has since sparked a walk down memory lane, digging up all the memorabilia and trophies, with the intention of helping put together a timeline of the darts competition for Andy’s playing days.
