World darts- sport or not sport?

 World Darts- sport or not sport.

There was a time when darts used to be dismissed as some riveting pub game played by either your work colleagues after a hard, punishing day at the office or just as some harmless recreation at Sunday lunchtime before tucking ravenously into your traditional roast dinner with all the trimmings. Darts was that diverting past-time of those who had grown totally disillusioned with either snooker or dominoes, possibly shove ha' penny, before downing your Guinness and then checking the day's racing results.

But today marked the end of the Cazoo World Darts Championship at London's most celebrated darts venue Alexander Palace in North London or as it's affectionately known 'Ally Pally'. Now in the usual scheme of things none of us would have batted an eyelid at something that may have been scheduled to take place as normal. Some of us still think of darts as something that normally accompanied bar billiards and a quick pull on those one armed bandit machines that are guaranteed to bring a sardonic smile to your face. What can't be denied is that Michael Smith is the new World Darts champion.

And yet this is the point when all of those tired stereotypes and prejudices creep into your vision and then reinforce your arguments just when somebody tells you that darts should be considered as an Olympic sport. At this point you simply move away from this heated conversation and just accept the status quo even if you still believe that you were right anyway. So you just let the discussion simmer in some small corner of Ally Pally and allow the show to go on.

Almost 50 years ago darts would be compulsive watching on London Weekend TV's World of Sport, almost a definitive signature event sandwiched between horse racing(ITV seven) with John Rickman and Brough Scott and breathtaking cliff diving in Mexico. Then just when you thought you'd seen everything there was to watch, stock car racing, yachting and, quite possibly, caber tossing from Edinburgh. TV sport had reached the lowest levels of childish banality or maybe not depending on your point of view.

 Finally there was the hilarious wrestling from Leeds Town Hall with Jackie Pallo and Giant Haystacks, a spectacle so ridiculous and incomprehensible that many of us thought that the executives at London Weekend Television had lost their minds. Hey, hold on there are some of us who had nothing but admiration for Dickie Davies and my grandpa loved the grapple gang with their outrageous wrestling antics. So it was that we settled down to cast our critical eyes on the kind of TV nonsense we'd ever seen. But if my grandpa had no objections to grown up men lifting each other up into the air and then jumping on them almost naturally then who were to disagree?

In between both wrestling and horse racing darts emerged as a positive breakthrough in televised sport or, perhaps, still pub game. Shortly after the football preview On the Ball with the gentleman who was Brian Moore as presenter, it was darts from somewhere in Manchester, Bolton, Oldham, Preston or Sheffield, Leeds, Wigan and Bradford. The images were quite memorable but according to the cynics, ugly, unbearable, embarrassing and eminently forgettable. The trouble was that nobody could get their heads around darts as a compelling and legitimate sporting occasion. 

But your abiding recollection of darts is that of a lunchtime TV event that represented everything that was both unhealthy, distinctly underwhelming and just lazy, almost slovenly. Here we were watching middle aged men with cigarettes in one hand, several pints of beer in the other and only a steady eye to aid their intense concentration. Somewhere in there was a pub game that just wanted to be fully accepted into the sporting mainstream. Resistance would become futile.

Soon we were treated to the extrovert likes of Eric Bristow, Jocky Wilson, Bobby George and more recently Phil 'The Power' Taylor, men with an insatiable appetite for 181s, bullseyes and then a fixed grin for their rapt admirers. Darts though had become box office, a delightful discovery in the great, athletic world of sport, something to devour your Ploughman's lunch with gleeful relish. For a while it would become a permanent fixture on TV screens and radio, an unavoidable reference point for TV lunchtime viewing.

For ages darts would become engulfed in huge quantities of cigarette smoke, white wisps of nicotine hovering dramatically over a room now seemingly gripped with feverish excitement. Huge crowds of families and fanatical darts enthusiasts would shout and bellow their now relentless enthusiasm. Pints of lager, shorts and gallons of lager would be swallowed down with unashamed enjoyment. Then the men with silk shirts and colourful letters on the back of those shirts would step forward in quite a knowledgeable fashion as if they were about to take a university exam. Now what did those stubborn sceptics know about darts? It was brilliant, marvellously entertaining and what was there not to like about it.

It still seemed though, that darts was regarded as the lowest common denominator, scraping the bottom of a dirty barrel and just dreadful in the extreme. Did the likes of Bristow, George and Wilson realise that this was just a clear example of wasted youth? You could argue that darts involved the simple exertion of bending your index finger back and clutching the said arrow for all it was worth. Then the arm and elbow would be gently lifted in an arduous display of ice cool composure before the arrow would be sharply released into the air and hopefully hit the number 20 in the same spot. 180! What about that Ladies and Gentlemen.

In more recent times darts travelled to the more salubrious suburbs of Essex. In a kind of mass sporting migration the preferred venue of choice was Purfleet and the Circus Tavern just off a busy motorway. Regularly thousands would flock to the Circus Tavern for the main cabaret. Some who might have been offended by this gross parody of sport, this bizarre burlesque in some small corner of deepest Essex, could only hold up their hands in horror.

Still, here we are in the second decade of the 21st century and the slightly unfortunate stigma that has now been attached to darts seems to have all but vanished. Admittedly, it still involves the straightforward act of chucking sharp tipped arrows at a black board with numbers dotted around the board and you still get the same score for hitting whichever part of the board you happen to be aiming at.

But now it's markedly different. The prize money is still obscenely extortionate but now the darts players themselves are sober, more abstemious individuals who just drink Coca Cola or orange juice in between throws. The cigarettes are still there but even then they're hardly noticeable in the general competition of it all. The sponsorship money seems to multiply by hundreds and thousands of pounds every time darts is played but then where would we be without the Cazoo Darts Championships?

So get ready for the World Championships live from Alexander Palace. Yes 'Ally Pally, once the home of BBC TV at its birth, a monument to splendid achievement and groundbreaking invention. Eventually a winner of the World Darts Championship has emerged triumphant but then we'll once again question its sporting credentials because athleticism of one kind or another does seem the major requirement. But please step up to the oche gentlemen, gaze into a numbered board and dream your dreams.