Ladies and Gentlemen, best of order please!!! (Darts)

Member Name: angry chris

Product:	Darts
Date:	11/01/03 (943 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great to play, Great to watch, Teaches maths really well to all ages

Disadvantages: Devalued Embassy is a joke, Limited viewing access to the real players., May soon implode on itself.

Now, those of you who know me will know that this is exactly my type of sport. Not only is the physical exertion practically nil, but it is played, predominatly, in the pub. Can't get much better than that!
Darts, however, is a magnificent game, played by millions worldwide, and is without doubt one of the greatest spectator sports in the world. Yet it was also the scene of the greatest civil war any sport has ever seen...

For the uninitiated, darts is mainly a pub game, where local leagues are played out throughout the year. The aim of the game is to get 501 points, counting down, by throwing three pieces of rather sharp tungston/nickle(depending on preference) into a horse-hair board mounted on the wall 7 feet 9 inches away and 5 feet 8 inches high from the bull, the little red circle in the midlle of the board. Depending on your area of play, you may have to start on a "double"-on of the segments on the outer irng, but you will definantly have to finish on a double in order to win a leg. Three legs make a set, and the winner in the first to win the agreed amount of legs or sets.

Easy, huh? Indeed it seems. However, after nearly ten years of playing this game, I for one am still practically appaling at it, having ammassed a grand total of 3 one hundred and eighties in my lifetime(you get this by hitting the middle ring of the board, the treble, with all three darts). Pretty pathetic.

Darts is one of the best sports in the world to watch. It is quick, exiting, high scoring and has some of the most tense moments known in any sport. Imagine trying to hold your hand steady while throwing for double 20 for the match. Believe me, it takes some doing.
Darts is also played in the pub. Even the biggest tournaments of all are played in pubs, so if the game is crap, a plethora of beers are on hand. How can you go wrong.

The nine-dart finish is the pinnacle of darts. It is the eqivalent of a 147 break in
snooker. The plan is to hit 180, 180, treble 20, treble 15, double 18. To give you some idea of how hard this is, it has only been done three times on TV in the last 30 years, by John Lowe, Paul Lim and Phil Taylor. The prize for this is always more than the prize for actually winning the tournament: this year the reward was a dartboard with a diamond where the bullseye should be, worth nigh on £125,000.

The Darts on TV are commentated on by the now legendary Sid Wadell, the Geordie lad with a degree in spouting tripe. Recent classics include:
"He's reaching for something tall and yellow in a long glass, and I don't mean Daffodils!"
"Some dutch clogs are made of cheap wood, but this one(a Dutch darts player) is made of barrelled oak!"
"It couldn't be more noisy in here if Elvis himself walked in and fancied a throw!"

Priceless.

With the darts being on TV at the moment, the time is probably right to tell you all a story, because I am sick to the back teeth of this being re-iterated badly on the BBC. Go on, Bobby"I got thrashed twice in the final" George, tell me again...

Darts made it's first TV appearence in 1977 when the British Darts Organisation collated all the best players from the county league system and from around the world and began a "World Championship", to be played annually after Christmas at the Lakeside Country Club, in Frimley Green, Surrey. The idea was to bring one of the most popular sports in the world into a national audience.

They succeeded. By 1985, the World Darts championship, along with the Masters, the Grand Prix and the British Open were all regular fixtures on the BBC, and darts had reached the peak of it's popularity. In 1982, a truly awful programme called "Bullseye" appeared, and depite itself became a ratings winner. Players like Eric "Craftey Cockney" Bristow, John Lowe and Kei
th Dellar were household names. Over 10 million people watched Dellar beat Bristow in the classic 1983 World Championship(sponsered by now by Embassy). The idea that fat blokes could smoke themselves to death, drink themselves to near stupors and STILL win thousands of pounds found a mass appeal.

However, like most things, the appeal began to fade. Darts, in an attempt to save itself and it's sponsers, tried to change its image. The booze and fags were banned, but it was to no avail, there were no charachters like Jocky Wilson left in the game. By 1993, only the Embassy was shown on the BBC, and things were starting to fall apart.

Incredibly, the players then decided to take matters into there own hands. Frustrated by the lack of money available in the game, the majority of the top players, led by then world champion Phil Taylor decided to create a new organisatiopn, the Professional Darts Corporation. In the 1993 Embassy, the bizairre sight of players throwing with the PDC logo on their shirts was widespread, and caused great alarm. The BDO, instead of trying to negotiate with the renegades, decided that the best thing to do was to throw them all out, including the champion, in the hope that they would see the error of their ways and all come back.

Unfortunately for the BDO, a new sports channel called "Sky Sports" decided to offer the players a new venue, at the Circus Tavern in Purfleet, a new sponser in Skol and a new circuit including three televised tournaments a year and increased prize money. The PDC was born and underway...

In 1994 Canadian John Part became the Embassy Champion, becoming the first foreigner to win the title. However, it had become utterly devalued. All the major players:Bristow, Taylor, Lowe, Deller, Warrinor and Priestley had gone. Beating Bobby George 6-0 in the final did not matter, and the great debate begun, and rages until this day.

As a darts affictionado, allow m
e to add my tuppanceworth to the debate.

In the Mid 1990's, the split was fairly even. In the PDC, Phil"the Power" Taylor continued to dominate a tournament which tried to introduce glitz and glamour into the game. The booze and fags were definately a thing of the past, and nicknames and musical entrances like boxers meant that darts shed it's working class image without selling out it's working class roots.
In the BDO, the Embassy continued to attract some of the best players. Champions like Ritchie Burnett, Steve Beaton and Les Wallace all made sure that the standard didn't drop and that the BDO retained it's appeal.


However, the BDO dug it's own grave by stating that the players in the Embassy could not play in any PDC events, thus denying the top players the chance to play in the televised events and test themselves against the by now all conquering Phill Taylor, who has racked up 10 world titles. So the top players, including Burnett, Beaton, Baxter, Scholten and Mason all left the BDO and joined the PDC. Until recently, their presence has not really been noticed. Until now.

This year, Wayne Mardle joined the PDC. He is probably the best player in the BDO. He played at the Circus Tavern and gave the seemingly invincible Phil Taylor the game of his life, but lost a classic 5-3. In the final, Taylor met the world number 2, John Part, who commentates on the BBC event, and was beaten 7 sets to 6 in the greatest final ever.
Meanwhile, in the BDO, two or three players continue to play at a high standard, while the rest seem to play at a standard befitting the games bar room roots. Players like Mervyn King, Ted Hankey, Tony O'Shay and Ray Barnaveld are certainly fit for the PDC, but the rest are simply not good enough. The entire thing became further devalued when 2 time champion Ray Barnaveld played Phil Taylor in a "Unification match" 3 years ago, and was soundly spank
ed. He has since bottled out of switching to the more presidgious PDC.

After watching the PDC championship on Sky, the Embassy is a huge anti-climax, depite the efforts of the idiotic Bobby George to spice things up. Darts tore itself apart, but there is life still in the embers, but those embers are not in the BDO.

Congratulations to John Part-anyone who watched his epic match last weekend will know he is a true champion, unlike the "champ" who will be crowned on Sunday at the Lakeside.

Despite this, Darts remains a great game, it in truth is not a sport, although it contains some of the crucial elements of a sports' makeup: drama, excitement, watchability and dedication to the game. Next time you are in the pub, have a try, I promise you will like it!

Now where the hell has Jim bloody Bowen gone...

Summary: