TheOche.com

From a blog article by Benjie Goodhart on blogs.guardian.co.uk:

Typical. You wait months on end for a darts tournament on terrestrial TV, and then two come along at once. What? You haven’t been waiting? Are you quite mad? Next you’ll be telling me you don’t even own a shirt with your name badly crocheted into the back by your mum. Sheesh!

Darts, I’ll have you know, is the king of sports. It’s the activity of choice for those who see snooker as an unnecessary cardiovascular workout. Its practitioners may not be the Herculean athletes of Olympian ideals, but they know how to put on a show. If you don’t believe me, have a look this Saturday. On either ITV or BBC, because both of the nation’s most popular channels are covering darts live. Even as I type, my fingers are trembling like Paul Lim on his ninth dart at Frimley Green in 1990.

OK, for those of you who think Frimley Green is a paint colour, I’ll start at the beginning.

In the beginning, there was darts. And it was good. And the people did come from far and wide to watch men drink pints, smoke Regal filters, and chuck arrers. And those who couldn’t make it did watch on TV. And the Cockney who was Crafty did defeat the unusually plump Jocky, and there was much rejoicing. But lo, it came to pass that smoking tabs and drinking beer was not considered athletic, and the false idol TV took its ball and went home in a veritable mishmash of mixed metaphors.

To cut a short story even shorter, without TV and sponsorship revenue, prize money fell. In 1992, the leading players decided that the British Darts Organisation wasn’t doing enough to attract new sponsors and TV coverage, and went their own way, forming what was to become the Professional Darts Corporation. They soon got both the high profile sponsor and major broadcaster they were after, with the Lada UK Masters transmitting on Anglia TV. Since then, there have been two rival gangs battling it out for supremacy, Montagues and Capulets in polyester shirts, seeking to prove that their darts organisation is the greatest.

In truth, the PDC has more claim to superiority. It boasts the best player of all time, Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor, and his major rival, Raymond ‘Barney’ van Barneveld, as well as a host of other top names, not to mention greater prize money. But the BDO still boasts some of the sport’s most recognisable figures, including Martin ‘Wolfie’ Adams, and Andy ‘The Viking’ Fordham (though fans will be shocked to see the new, slimmed-down version of Fordham who, following a health scare, has lost ten stone to tip the scales at a skeletal 16-stone).

For the entire article, please visit Blogs.guardian.co.uk.