Follow the Arrow: Why I love Darts

Darts is one of those hilarious non-sports that Sky Sports use to pad out their schedule, up there with showjumping, bowling, snooker and rugby. Think of a darts match, and you’ll probably think of two pot-bellied pub dwellers ambling drunkenly up to the oche and accidentally hitting double barmaid, best summed up in this sketch from Not the Nine O’Clock News:

But here’s my slightly shameful secret: I bloody love darts.

Sky Sports cover the PDC and, as they always do, have gone to town with the presentation. It’s no longer two middle aged guys with beer guts and crap facial hair in the function room of a badly lit pub. No, they’re playing in front of 5,000 people who can’t see a thing:

Sitting at the back, trying to see millimetre-perfect throws – you might as well be at home watching on Sky. At least you can pause it when you need a wee.

Every visual effect they can manage is employed, from slo-mo darts-in-flight to a dramatic zoom on the treble twenty when there’s a chance for 180. The maximum score of course punctuated by a bellowed “OOOOONNNNNE HUUUUNNNNNDDDDDRRREEEEEEDDDD AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNDDDD AAAAAYYYYYY-TEEEEEEEE” from improbably-named Cockney wideboy scorer Russell Bray.

The crowd at this point, go literally mental, attacking each other with screwdrivers and claiming God told them to do it. Or, on occasion, a huge cheer goes out – starting at the front with the seven people who can actually see what happened, while the other 4,993 cheer because everyone else is. Yay for peer pressure. Comedy fancy dress is a particular favourite amongst the fans, and you’ll often see a giant banana sharing a pint with Dennis the Menace, while their friend Wonder Woman holds up a hastily marker-penned sign saying “WE MISS YOU JADE”.

Where would darts be without a bit of glamour? That’s right, BBC2. So it’s not just enough that the players come out and throw tungsten at the wall, they also need a gimmick, a hook to get the crowd going. So in true 80s WWF style, they all have a nickname, music and an entrance routine.

There’s The Bull, Terry Jenkins, who comes out to Wooly Bully, a song you’ve never heard of, and puts his darts up like bull’s horns while kicking his foot back like he’s stood in dogshit. Oh, and there’s this guy. He’s the guy that wasn’t paying attention when they were told to come up with something, and did it in a panic at the last minute.

“Darth” John Maple. Who carries a plastic lightsabre out with him and waves it around, while wandering up to the stage to The Death March. And the poor darts girl (see – more glamour) has to carry it back to Alderon for him while looking like a prize tit.

Incidentally, the funniest bit of any entrance is when the player, flanked on either side by a girl half his age wearing next to nothing, gets to his wife and gives her a little kiss, as a little reminder of what he’s going home to. Oh, and the Wikipedia page for each player doesn’t use the word “handedness”, instead going for the altogether more awesome “Laterality”. Laterally, I wank with my left.

The thing that sets darts apart from other competitions is that you can make massive scores in one go. So in a football match, if you’re one nil up, you can only go two nil up, or draw one all. In darts, if you need 141 and your opponent needs 2, you can still win with enough skill. And it is bloody skilful, throwing three darts into an area 8mm wide, from over seven foot away. Normal people (i.e. me) sometimes miss the board entirely. Look at the dartboard in your local, assuming you have a local still and it’s not been turned into a bloody wine-bar. There’s holes absolutely everywhere – you could almost say it’s holier than the Catholic Church. Or you could if you were a cunt.

There’s not really a lot of profound analysis a commentator can do during a game of darts – you can see what numbers they need to hit and whether they’ve hit or not fairly easily using your eyes, but having the whole thing in silence is a bit weird. The best compromise really is to get a crazy old northerner to say absolutely anything he thinks of. Ladies and gentlemen, Sid Waddell.

There’s plenty of sites out there full of Sid’s demented spoutings, but his style is to mix an impressive knowledge of history, torturous wordplay and a crazy embellishment of the importance of darts. Probably his most famous, and therefore most bollocks line:

“When Alexander of Macedonia was 33 he cried salt tears because there were no more worlds to conquer – Bristow is only 27″

Finally, here’s a clip of Raymond van Barneveld throwing a perfect finish. That’s 501 exactly in nine darts. This has it all: Emotionless lobbing, an over-excited crowd and Waddell calling the finish “impossible” at precisely the point that the final dart lands.