Darts, what's the point?

Darts on the telly, what's the appeal?

With the two competing bodies of world darts staging their world championships over the festive season this is a question many darts fans find themselves facing yet again. A question asked either by a long suffering other half on the neighbouring couch or by disbelieving mates down the pub aghast at the prospect of watching overweight, sweaty men with enough bling weighing down the non-throwing hand to sink a small battleship, throw three small darts at the treble twenty over and over and over again.

Wunnnhunnndddreedd!

Yet this simple concept is enough to keep the baying crowd of thousands in the Alexandra Palace or The Lakeside hanging on every throw of every dart, admittedly a crowd that is fuelled by the free flowing fluids from the bar and pumped up by the cheerleaders, the excitable MC and the boxing style entrances of the players with theme music, nicknames and enough flashing lights to rival an illegal rave in a drugs factory. These truly are gladiators of their own arenas, heroes with physiques seemingly unsuitable for anything other than throwing the tiny tungsten arrows with incredible precision over a distance of 236.86cm. As the late, great commentator Sid Waddell said of the current PDC world champion, 

"If we'd had Phil Taylor at Hastings against the Normans, they'd have gone home."

And what of their oft mocked physical profiles? Well after multiple world champion Martin Adams’ defeat to teenager Jimmy Hendriks (‘there’s only two Jimmy Hendriks,’ roared the crowd), pundit and ex-player Bobby George – who has so much jewellery on that he has to make an appointment in advance with airport security before he can fly – put Adams’ run of poor form down to his recent weight loss and subsequent reduced stability at the oche.

This argument seems to hold sway with the case of Andy ‘The Viking’ Fordham who won the 2004 world championship at an impressive 31 stone. With a warm up regime definitely not recommended by sports scientists, Fordham would forego limbering up and instead stretch for 25 lagers. He claims not to remember that 2004 final and eventually after a stern warning from doctors (liver 75% dead, other 25% in bad nick) he managed to lose 16 stone. In his own words,

“I won’t be able to stop the drinking just like that but I’ve hopefully cut it in half and if you cut what I drink in half that is a hell of a lot.”

 This is also the man, though, who claims he is an athlete because he’s been on Grandstand and wears trainers, and defends his sport by highlighting that,

 “Shooting is in the Olympics and they lie on the floor.”

And yet after he shed the pounds he sunk down the rankings to the fringes of the sport, never to reach anything like the dizzying heights of his previous, weighty achievements.

They may not have the chiselled bodies of Olympic athletes (although it has been rumoured to be put forward as a possible discipline) but add in the pressures of a rowdy crowd, the stakes at risk, and the fine wire between double sixteen and failure being literally a millimetre wide, to succeed they really do need Olympian-like concentration and good old fashioned bottle, although these days 'that' type of bottle is not allowed to be drunk on stage in an exercise in image management from the governing bodies.

Evidence of pure drama in black and white

This all adds up to a thrilling spectacle as each throw can produce the sheer drama of a penalty shootout, tiny mistakes in the release of a dart making the difference between success and failure. Even external factors such as ‘phantom draughts’ on stage causing mayhem such as in the 2012 Championships when James Wade and Adrian Lewis stormed off the stage for 30 minutes complaining about ‘rubbish conditions.’ 

Momentum can shift like a pendulum as players collapse under the pressure only to stage miraculous comebacks as they find their mojo and confidence surges back through the veins. No better man to sum up such a moment, Waddell said during one engrossing and well attended match,

"There was less noise when Pompeii was swamped in lava! Absolute pandemonium here! Barmaids are frozen like Greek statues watching! No beer's been served! Everybody's eyes are absolutely hooked on that board."

So do yourself a favour, buy a board, find a wall owned by someone who doesn't mind it being pockmarked by wayward targeting and to see how it should be done flick on the telly to witness not only a huge, extravagant example of showmanship, but also a genuine nail biting sporting contest going on in the middle of it all.