More than 500 tickets have been donated for Ipswich Town’s home game against West Brom next Friday evening after one small act of kindness gained online momentum.

Blues supporter and EADT/Ipswich Star columnist Karl Fuller saw his 12-year-old twin daughters packing a Christmas shoebox for children in Romania and, on the spur of the moment, was inspired to offer a pair of tickets to any fan who couldn’t usually afford to go.

That one tweet last Saturday morning captured the imagination and led to dozens more supporters offering to match the offer and, in less than a week, donations reached the £2,400 mark.

Among those to donate was Blues skipper Luke Chambers, who logged on to add £50 to the pot as well as rallying his team-mates to donate 20 of their complementary tickets for the game.

The cut-off point to donate was yesterday. Ipswich Town Football Club have now said they will match the number of tickets bought with the £2,400. With ticket prices ranging from £3-10 for the game due to an offer, that equates to more than 500.

Karl, with the help of Graham Blackburn and Stephen Skeet, have selected two schools (Northgate and Farlingaye) as well as nine charities (Volunteering Matters, Ormiston Families, Impact Project, Suffolk Refugee Support, Inspire Suffolk Prince’s Trust, Suffolk Family Carers, The Mix Stowmarket, 4YP and Porch Project Hadleigh) to donate their tickets to – all of which will be in the Cobbold Stand Lower.

Ipswich Town will be donating their tickets to East Anglian Children’s Hospice, Samaritans, Suffolk Mind and the Elena Baltacha Foundation.

More than 17,000 have already been sold, with the hope being that a crowd in excess of 19,000 can be attracted for a game that is going to be televised live on Sky Sports.

This is the second time in a number of months that Town fans have shown their spontaneous generosity after Richard Hibbert and Damian Anderson were the driving force behind raising more than £4,000 for East Anglian Children’s Hospice to celebrate Bartosz Bialkowski signing a new contract.