See the Six Nations Discusssion thread. A tournament such as this deserves its own thread. Hoping to get as many live updates as possible.
Just to note that Trina Gulliver will be on A Question of Sport on Friday, May 28th at 7.30pm.
Will there be muff diving?
Peter Masson Has Passed Away.
RIP - Gentleman of Darts.
+1
RIP Peter.
Would he have been any relation to the PDC player Chris Mason?
Great win for John “Boy” Walton yesterday as he clinched the England Masters title in Stockport. John Boy was making amends for his defeat on Friday in the final of the England National Singles Championship,which was also played at Stockport County’s Edgeley Park and won by local favourite Daryl Fitton. It’s brilliant to see John Boy, a former World Champion of course, in good form again.
But the big news from yesterday’s action was Kev Simm’s spectacular nine darter. It’s the talk of the darting world and Kev was well rewarded for his efforts as he was presented with a check for £250 by the England Darts Organisation.
I really wish there was some top class televised darts during the summer. The BDO have done a great job in making it a year round game, but it would be lovely to relax at home and actually see some action, rather than having to rely on the admittedly excellent BDO website for news.
Surprising to see Gulliver beaten at the weekend too, sid.
[quote=“Bandage, post: 426472”]
Surprising to see Gulliver beaten at the weekend too, sid.
[/quote]Gulliver was brought down to size by Deta Hedman, that’s for sure.
Only one game in town as regards Darts this weekend and that was the BDO Inter-County Youth Knockout Cup. And what a shock we had, as the West Midlands B team beat Kent A in the final on a nailbiting 4-3 scoreline. It’s a real two fingers to their A team, and proof that pride in playing for your county is what it’s all about. A tribute to their hard work and dedication. Should be some party in Birmingham tonight.
I heard Dave Chisnall no longer goes to Morecambe to practice darts and spends his day now playing snap while living off state handouts…
You heard wrong.
BDO players have been routinely demolishing their PDC opponents in the Grand Slam of Darts which got underway yesterday.
Tony O’Shea demolished James Wade 5-1 this evening, following up his earlier 5-1 victory against Vincent van der Voort.
And Dave “Chizzy” Chisnall has clearly been back to Morecambe to practice over the last few months. He stuffed PDC World Championship finalist Simon Whitlock 5-1 as well.
Martin Phillips and Scott Waites sit joint top of their group while The Count, Ted Hankey is in ominously good form ahead of his clash with Phil Taylor. It’s proving embarrassingly easy so far.
The other big news is that the draw has been made for the 2011 World Championship at Lakeside. Incredible to think we’re now just seven weeks away from the big one.
Scott Waites v Ted Hankey should be an epic tie and it’s a real shame that one of them will have to go out in the first round, but then that just proves the strength in depth of the BDO.
Dave Prins (16) v John Walton
Martin Adams (1) v Tony West
Willy V D Wiel (9) v Alan Soutar
Tony O’Shea (8) v Ross Smith
Mark Barilli (12) v Martin Phillips
Joey Ten Berge (5) v Shaun Griffiths
Gary Robson (13) v Steve Douglas
Steve West (4) v Dave Chisnall
Scott Mitchell (15) v Jan Dekker
Stuart Kellet (2) v Darryl Fitton
Garry Thompson (10) v Arno Merk
Ross Montgomery (7) v Alan Norris
Brian Woods (11) v Stephen Bunting
Scott Waites (6) v Ted Hankey
Robbie Green (14) v Andy Boulton
Dean Winstanley (3) v Martin Atkins
Tony Fleet seems to be missing from that list.
Unfortunately Tony’s appearances at the Lakeside are all too fleeting.
Was this the worst leg of darts ever? Certainly not. Somewhere, in a quiet pub, or against the back of a nine-year-old’s bedroom door, a worse leg of darts takes place every day. Darts isn’t as easy as it looks, you know.
But was it the worst leg of darts televised live by a publicly funded national broadcaster? No shadow of a doubt. Straight in at No 1. With a bullet. “Hang on, though,” you’re going to interject. “What about that time Johnny Vegas played Rowland Rivron on Showbiz Darts? That was pretty crap.”
Yes, it was. But it was on the Challenge channel, which is not publicly funded. And it wasn’t live. And it was a better game of darts.
Let me stress: we’re not just talking bad, here. We’re talking award-winningly bad. We’re talking so bad it was good.
The scene: the Lakeside in Frimley Green, Surrey, home of the BDO World Championships, which every year at this time must launch its noble but battered rowing boat into the wake left by the PDC’s surging cruise liner, as it departs Alexandra Palace, North London, foghorn blaring, all the best players in the world on board and a disco under way on the poop deck.
So, it’s Monday evening. Set to play is Martin “Wolfie” Adams, a former winner of this event who has been drawn to start his campaign against Tony Fleet, a qualifier from Australia, about whom, it is fair to say, little is known. Not that that marks Fleet out, down Lakeside way.
All goes well in the walk-ons. Adams does his traditional wolf-howl, which is as much a part of the fixtures at the Lakeside as Martin Fitzmaurice MC and the curtains. Fleet enters to Men at Work’s Down Under, to nobody’s great surprise. (It’s the default song choice for the first-time Antipodean darter. Indeed, you would probably get fined if you didn’t use it.) And both make it to the oche intact.
Then again, so they should. At the Lakeside, the players reach their place under the spotlights by a short and relatively risk-free stride around the scenery from stage right. Call that a walk-on? PDC-affiliated players, who are obliged to travel something in the region of 100 metres, in a phalanx of heavies, while overexcited fans are inadvertently threatening to slice off their ears with message boards, wouldn’t even call it a walk.
Anyway, on this occasion, the usual formalities (the handshakes, the practice throws) are completed without incident, and with no indication whatsoever that we are about to witness anything unusual.
And then, finally, play starts. Looking back, one tries to pinpoint the moment at which it became clear that one was watching not just a bad leg of darts, but a monumentally bad one — a gold-plated bad leg of darts, a bad leg of darts for the album, and a YouTube classic in the making. (The posted version of this encounter had recorded 2,415 hits the last time I looked and I don’t see that figure getting any smaller over the next few days.) Was it when Fleet dropped his third dart on to the floor for the second time? Or was it when he did that for the third time? Was it the moment the Australian stepped up to the oche and scored 11? Or was it when he scored five? Or maybe it was the effect of those long pauses that Fleet kept taking to steady himself and cast ruminative and slightly glassy gazes off to one side.
But let’s not dwell exclusively on what Fleet brought to this moment of television history. After all, it takes two players to make a bad darts match, so let the record show that, in this leg of legs, Adams, a former BDO world champion, required no fewer than 26 darts to check out from 501. Let the record additionally show that Adams’s first five visits to the board yielded: 60, 47, 44, 32 and 60.
Now, that’s Dog & Duck standards, on a night when even the duck has phoned in sick. If those levels of scoring were to be repeated across the tournament, it would be June before anyone reached the quarter-finals.
Afterwards, Adams redeemed himself by nobly defending his defeated opponent. “That’s the Lakeside stage,” he insisted. “That’s what it can do to you.”
But Colin Murray, the BBC’s anchorman, seemed to be nastily insinuating that the Lakeside bar may have played a part, too. “I never realised that nerves could have that effect on a player,” Adams said. To which Murray replied: “Sometimes they get so nervous, they look drunk.”
But that’s a discussion for other people to worry about. We had just seen the worst-ever leg of televised darts, live on BBC Two, and we were happy. And to think that some people moan about the licence fee.
Taylor wearing glasses in this too. Hmmmmm could it be due to the beds being smaller on the Grand Slam boards?
PDC - Darts for mongs.
There must be an unbelievable quality of player in the World Championship draw when you see the superstars that are unseeded.
Disappointing to see that Ireland will have no representative at Lakeside, especially given Marty McCloskey’s excellent recent form when he reached the semi-finals of the World Masters, losing with honour to World Champion Martin Adams. Neither McCloskey nor Daryl Gurney made it through the qualifiers. Former Hart to Hart star and serial Lakeside classic participant Robert Wagner is another notable absentee.
While it’s disappointing to see players of this quality absent, the fact is that they were simply beaten by better players. The beauty of the BDO is that the volume of suprememly talented players is such that new unheralded stars are always rising to the top. Look at Chizzy’s rise over the last year. I’m looking forward to seeing young, little known players making a similar impact this year.