Once upon a time I was known in darts as The Black Spot.
You will remember in Treasure Island that when Blind Pew handed you the noir message it meant you were a dead man. For years now if I tipped a player to do well in a big darts tourney…he lost. Well, in the last 14 days or so that has changed and on darts blogs worldwide I am being hailed as Sidney the Soothsayer.
It was at the Bournemouth Premier League night that I began reading the seaweed and fiddling with the leaves in my teacup. Then I watched Phil Taylor slaughter Wayne Mardle 8-0 with a 97 average AND saw Taylor do the ‘understacker’ 180 that is new to his armoury. Next came news of big victories by The Power over Klaasen and Van der Voort with 107 averages.
So I predicted an 8-3 victory by Phil over Barney at Nottingham with a 107 average and was proved right – except his average was 111. Then Sid the Seer did it again; I said on Sky News that Phil would beat John 8-3 with a 105 average – in fact he did 107.5.
It’s not magic. It’s pure science; like Darwin looking at turtle bellies to work out the meaning of life. Taylor has in two weeks taken his game to a new level.
TERRIFIC TAYLOR
Looking back through my records – old logs and programmes and PDC scoring files – I find that Taylor’s previous career peak was in 2002/3 He started the year with his 10th world championship, only dropping two sets and averaging 111 against Shayne Burgess in Round Two. Then at Blackpool in the summer he did a nine-darter against Chris Mason in a match in which he averaged 111. A year later in Dublin, Phil beat John Part in the Grand Prix final 7-2 with a 95 average, double to start. This equates to a 103 average straight in. In this he won 12 legs on the trot – in one set averaging 115 in the most consistent hostile tungsten tickling I have ever seen.
I honestly never thought Phil could get back to that standard. But I believe that with his new darts he is better than ever. I hazard a guess that he will never drop below a 100 average in the rest of the Premier League.
What a man. He always sets the agenda and the bar for our booming sport.
ROCKING DARTS
I am often asked to explain why thousands of people flock to the Premier League Darts nights.
I look at it this way. At football you have to sit down, fair enough. You can dress up and drink at Test matches in cricket but you can’t really let your hair down. But at the League nights you can have all the fun you can have at a rock concert or a pantomime. You can dress up in a Mardle shirt; you can whet your whistle and boo Broker’s Man Manley; you can sing anthems to Taylor and mock your boss with a message about being absent on your placard. It is a complete gas.
At Sheffield we had 5700 fans – the biggest live audience for a darts match since 12000 filled the Ally Pally in the 1970s for the News of the World Finals. At Liverpool the figure will go to 7000 and I reckon we could have a 10,000 crowd next season. We’ve come a long way from smoky taprooms where six relatives, bored barmaids and a mangy whippet watched the Frog and Ferret ‘B’ team in action.
Rock on.