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It may be last orders on the great British pub butwhat about the future of our traditional pub games?

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Calling time on our great British Games

June 09 The Observer Magazine 12

It may be last orders on the great British pub butwhat about the future of our traditional pub games?

merging out of the tunnel in a puff of smoke, a garish Hawai-ian shirt, and a combed mous-tache, Dennis Priestley is relish-

ing his return to the big stage. It has been two years since the man

from Mexborough graced the arena of the big money Premiere League darts tournament. And doesn’t he know it.

The crowd goes wild, as ‘The Men-ace’ steps into the bright lights of the Sheffield Arena, unbuttoning his shirt to reveal his trademark red and black stripes.

It is difficult to spot a member of the audience older than 25, and the fans are singing and swaying as they would at a Wembley World Cup final. They have turned the orderly fashion of the seating plan into a football terrace with chants like ‘there’s only one Dennis Priestley’ and ‘walking in a Priestley wonder

land.’Almost each and every one of them is

brandishing a 180 placard with irrel-evant scribblings such as: ‘Alright Ben’ and ‘hi Amy! Wish u were ‘ere’.

After his performance, that may have just knocked all the energy he had out of him, 14 times world champion, Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor is next to steal the lime-light, as his sequin glittering darts tart leads him through the crowds to meet his opponent.

I can only assume the pantomime cheers and jeers that follow and the spiel that dribbles out of the Geordie lips of commentator Sid Waddell, as Taylor takes the first leg on a double ten.

Why? Because just five miles down the road from the centre of world darts that night, I’m sat in front of a flat screen TV, munching on fish and chips and watch-

ing the coverage against the background noise of 90’s pop ‘classics’.

Unfortunately, this is one of few es-tablishments in Sheffield where I can feed my darts addiction on a Thursday night (universal darts night). And what a depressing and sad one it is.

In every corner of the room there is a flat screen TV. Half of them are tuned into Sky Sports News, the other half are showing the latest teen sensation music video. It is a Varsity Bar (owned by giants of the gastro pub trade, the Barracuda Group), whose current motto is crazy, sexy, cool. I’m not sure if there is anything quite ‘crazy’ about it – or sexy and cool at that, unless you count the fact that in places like this you can order a glass of Pinot Grigio, a selection of Greek meze alongside a mock basket of scampi and chips with a cheap pint of real ale, packets of pork scratching with

E


chocolate fudge brownies for desert. It seems like the modern pub goers want it all. Or perhaps not, because when you strip away the faux leather couches and mock renaissance mirrors (with stickers that read Ruby! Ruby! Ruby! Enjoy a curry for £3.50 stuck across them) the place is actually quite empty.

There is a darts board to the far right of the room, surrounded by flash spon-sorship deals and a rather unwelcoming sign that reads ‘Please ask for assist-ance’, I can’t help but think it is just there for show.

I pull out the three darts stuck in the bull, toe the oche, and move an inch closer to the board (women get a head start in this game). By fluke, the first lands in the twenty spot, the second in double seventeen and the third som-ersaulting in the air bounding off the board and planting itself into the sticky carpet. After a few disconcerting looks from the table of poker players sat be-hind me I give up and go back to watch-ing the muted darts match. Taylor won 7 – 4 in legs.

In the search for darts in a city that has produced a handful of world-class players, (BDO player John Boy Walton being the most famous) I head just a couple of miles down the road to Fa-gan’s, a traditional pub that stands on the edge of the post-industrial Sheffield wasteland.

Behind the bar landlord Tom Boulding pours me a pint of Moonshine, a pale ale brewed just ten minutes down the road.

Despite an insurgence of cranes pull-ing up the latest city living residence, there are few clues of what this neigh-borhood was once like and what Fagan’s once represented.

Its seven o’clock on a Wednesday night. Tom is recovering from a busy dinner time rush. The pub used to serve just lunch but in order to survive ex-tended its food hours a few years back.

“All day opening wrecked it for us,” says Tom, as he jumps up to serve another pint of Moonshine to a soggy regular who has just stepped in from the rain.

“It used to be the case that super-markets couldn’t open on a Sunday, we would get people in for the day, but now Sunday has lost all its shape.”

After pouring a half-pint of Tetley for himself he perches on a stool, guarding

the entrance to the bar. ‘Historically, this is an Irish pub’ he tells me.

The sleek glass towers and sophisti-cated student accommodation that now surround the pub, means it is often passed over.

“This whole area was where the Irish once lived,” says Tom, sprawling his arms to establish the areas where their houses once stood.

“All the old pubs round here were Irish pubs and every one of them had a darts board.”

Although the area outside the pub may have changed, Fagan’s is trapped in its charming but musty wood paneling, clinging on to a dying tradition in city centres nationwide.

Inside there are a cluster of rooms centred round a small bar littered with pub paraphernalia collected over the years. Most of it is of WW2 combat air-craft. However, above the optics there is a tidy row of police badges. One of them is from the Dutch police, brought in by a man who never fails to drop in every April when the city hosts the Snooker World Championships.

In the corner of the bar is a tidy stack of pub games; a chess board, cards for cribbage, darts and dominoes. Tom in-sists that he does have a small group of regulars, who play cribbage and chess, but tonight their chairs are empty and the lights in the back room where they sit are switched off.

The conversation turns to darts. Fa-gan’s is one of very few pubs left in the city that still has a board. “We have a few lads who come in from the banks. They will play a couple of games of darts before heading off for a curry.”

Tonight however, there is no one queuing for a quick game of round the board and the closed cabinet doors hid-ing the board may as well display a ‘do not disturb’ sign.

“We haven’t had a competitive darts match in here for at least 15 years,” says Tom, now pulling pints of Guinness to the surge of customers who have just walked through the door.

Tom’s wife, Barbara, joins us at the bar. She puts it down to the demise of industry in the area.

“Women used to line the streets out-side the steel houses around here wait-ing for their husbands to finish up work on a Thursday evening.

“They would take the majority of their wage so that it wasn’t all spent in the pub that night.

“They used to call it ‘tipping up’,” she says. “There weren’t that many working women, you see” before disappearing through a hidden door behind the bar. Apparently that’s the cellar.

She emerges soon after with a bucket full of ice, closing the cellar door with one foot before continuing on the sub-ject.

“Games night was such a traditional thing. Once a week, even the men would stay at home so the women could come out to play darts.”

“There was a time when you could stay out drinking all day, then drive home. I think more people used to play then,” says one regular, whose honesty has caused him to blush slightly.

Tom’s not sure he even misses the game. “Can you imagine darts flying around in some of the places in Shef-field? They could be classed as an offen-

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sive weapon.” And indeed they were, in Hudders-

field. The local council banned the game in pubs after a dart bounced off the board, implanting itself in a startled punter.

“I used to play in Crewe,” says one Fagan’s regular. “The women over there are better than the men. That’s why I stopped playing.” The bar breaks out with laughter. “The darts leagues over there are thriving,” he adds.

Tom disagrees, and with a grin on his face declares that is only because Chesh-ire is thirty years behind the rest of the country. “Next thing you know, they’ll have electricity”.

Sixty-five miles down the road, across the south Pennines and into Cheshire is the Prince’s Feathers Inn. A busy Wins-ford town centre pub, surrounded by four big housing estates.

It is what is described in the business as an “urban local” - the largest category of pubs facing closure. However there

are no such tell tale signs tonight. It’s Thursday night, its darts night,

and the two boards that occupy their own room in the pub have been swamped by the Feathers first team frantically throwing their tungsten ar-rows in last minute preparation.

Tonight they face local rivals, The Top House, the first team to come from the pub in over five years.

Much to the regulars’ discontent the pool table has been moved and now oc-cupies a big chunk of the bar side as a buffet table.

In recent years pubs have cleaned up their act and so have the punters in this case. So far it’s been an easy night for the staff because all those participating in the evening’s darts are drinking cans of coke and pints of cordial. Although sobriety is one of the most startling de-velopments in the game at the top level though I never realized it had seeped down to the grass roots.

However as I am later made aware this doesn’t last for too long. And, as com-petitors are gradually knocked out of the match so are the soft drinks, and pints of bitter and lager start to flow – though not quite to the levels of consumption of giants of the game Jocky Wilson and Cliff Lazarenko, who, combined kept the pub trade going throughout the 1970’s and 80’s.

The traditional pursuits of pub games are being kept alive and well here. A large cupboard behind the bar is over-flowing with dominoes, pin boards for cards, darts flights and cigar tins full of silver coins (the small stakes the card school play for on a Friday night).

It should come with a warning sign, as each time it is opened half a dozen darts

come toppling from the shelves, point side down.

Landlady Lou Hale agrees the games are essential for the survival of the pub: “At the moment the pub leagues are very important to us, they occupy three

nights a week. Dominoes is played eve-ryday in the pub but not many people are coming out for it now, it’s is dying off in that way.”

A year ago, she changed the family’s four-door saloon for a people carrier so the dominoes players had one less excuse to not make it to a game.

The team has been going for as long as anybody can remember and are still attracts the odd players, including the landlady’s daughter, 22-year-old stu-dent, Natalie.

“I asked one of the locals to teach me how to play. I was pretty good at it and once I got my confidence up decided to join the pub team.

“In terms of enough people playing it, no I don’t think there are, a lot of teams struggle sometimes to get a team togeth-er to even take part in the league. There have been a few younger people playing dominoes but generally people who play are over 40. It doesn’t have the same following or enthusiasm about it than darts, which is now considered a young game I think. Dominoes is renowned for being an old folks game. But I like it, it takes concentration and I like the people on our team, we have a laugh together.”

Landlady, Lou is quick to agree, she says if it wasn’t for people playing darts her takings would be down £200-£300 a night.

However, it seems the game isn’t as cemented as it would appear. “There’s always somebody on the darts board,” says Lou, “But not that many people are playing in a league. Last year we had two men’s and two ladies’ teams, now we are down to just one of each. I just think people can’t afford to come out-these days.”

It’s a trend that nobody quite understands. Accord-ing to Arthur Taylor, author of ‘Played at the Pub’, there are lots of regional variations in pub games and in areas where some games are becoming virtually extinct, others are thriving. “In parts of the West Country, the game Aunt Sally

is as popular as ever, (an outdoor game similar to skittles) the next generation of players are coming through all the time.”

However, there is no denying that nationwide there is an overall decline in

Last year we had two men’s and two ladies’ teams, now we are down to just one of each.“

.”

A dying tradition: dominos was onceat the heart of most British pubs


traditional pub pursuits. In early May this year one of the few surviving shove ha’penny leagues, based in Louth, Lincolnshire wound up after dwindling to only a handful of players.

“The generation that would be coming up are not inter-ested,” says Arthur. “Those who have matured through the computer age are a com-pletely different set of people. This has never been seen before. They are not play-ing dominoes, skittles or any other games.”

The demise of pub games is not a singular phenomenon, and goes hand in hand with the general state of pub life across the UK. According to the Beer and Pub Associa-tion total beer sales are down nine million pints a day since 1979, and Camra, the Cam-paign for Real Ale, puts the number of closures at six a day.

Arthur is quick to blame it on the rise of the gastro pub (or ghastly pub as is com-monly referred to in the busi-ness): “I always think that they are the type of places people go when they haven’t got any other pub to go to. They are destroying local trade because of their cheap beer.”

However, while other games are dissapearing, Darts is still the most popu-lar game played in pubs, and according to Arthur, over 50 per cent of pubs have a board. Patrick Chaplin, aka the ‘darts doctor’ believes the new interest in the game is not necessarily being reflect-ed in the pub. “The future of darts at the moment is the response of people watching Sky,” says Patrick.

“The majority of people who went out watch the old News of the World tournaments years ago were darts play-ers. They had respect for the

players.“Now it is people that want

to go out and socialize and they are much younger – they want to go out and have a good time.”

According to Patrick, the nature of darts has gone full circle. “In the 1930s, 40s and 50s you had the same fa-naticism. People would come along to major events in their coach loads carrying crates of beer.

“Then the BDO (British Darts Organization) came along and bought a bit of respectability to the game but Sky TV have no respect for the players. It is an event where the darts itself is run-ning peripheral with a darts match.”

For Arthur, it is not neces-sarily something we should be looking at through rose tinted spectacles. He thinks that pub games are as fluid as anything else in life. “Of course the latest sensation is poker,” he declares. Since the 2005 Gaming Act was-was introduced, people can now play the game in pubs and clubs for small stakes. “I never thought I would see the day. Gambling has been frowned upon by local au-thorities for years.”

However, without the pubs it is hard to say how long any of these games can survive.

“All the organizers are say-ing that in 25 years we will be looking back at this time as a golden age.” says Arthur in a sigh of nostalgia. If num-bers continue to dwindle in pub games across the land, the great British pub may have to call last orders on its few remaining teams. “It has become a bit of a worry, and I think this time they might be right.”

Special Feature

Poker: Replacing many traditional pub games

Skittles: Still thriving in the West Country

Pool: Still a firm favouite in many pubs and clubs


his is a practice routine we do,” says Dennis Priestley, two-times world darts champion and one

of the most respected players on the circuit.

“We throw three darts at treble ten and see what we can score,” he says with his first dart in mid-flight, heading straight for the target.

I’m sat in the Harlington Inn, a quiet, rural boozer in a village on the edge of Priestley’s hometown, Mexborough. A more modest setting than the packed out exhibitions and bright light arenas where he’s so used to making appear-ances.

“I’ve only been coming here for about six months,” he says in between sling-ing his 17-gram tungsten in an orderly fashion around the board.

“My old local in Mexborough became a bit of a dump – a bit mucky.”

The same cannot be said of this place, which is situated between fields of fluo-rescent rapeseed and quaint stone ter-races. It’s a scene that could have been lifted straight from the set of Last of the Summer Wine.

“The reason why I know this pub is because my older brother married a girl who lives just five doors down from here,” he says clanging his darts, as he points towards the door.

The pub is busy but the Champion’s League football being shown on the big screen is a far more attractive distrac-tion for the regulars than challeng-ing the world number eight to game of arrows. So we are left alone for the evening.

In the small darts room, a step down from the bar, Dennis is in preparation for his return to the Premier League. Without saying, he appears nervous. In just two days time he will be facing Phil Taylor, and it seems there are not enough hours in the day.

Dennis Priestley was born in Mexbor-ough in 1950, the son of a coal mer-chant, he grew up with his older broth-ers who first introduced him to the game.

His father, who worked regular nights at the local pit, before starting up his own businesses, passed away before Dennis had even become professional.

“He always stood market at Doncas-ter with bikes and spanners, things like that,” says Dennis, with a hint of nostal-

T

King of the Darts

From pub to palace, Dennis Priestley speaks to Katie Durose about life in his hometown of Mexborough


gia in his voice. “He were very hard working and in-

dustrious.”“I actually live now across the road

from where I were born. Me and my brother built a semi-detached house.”

“Where I live now used to be old Mexborough. There were all these little cottages and in 1963 they got condemned and pulled down. Our old house was right in the middle of it. The council did what they call a compulsory purchase.”

The house holds fond memories for Dennis. During his childhood it wasn’t just a home to him and his brothers but his uncles (from both sides) too. “We always had people coming and going”.

At the time, the council had offered the family £2,000 for the house, “It were a big set back for me dad. He had not long since finished building a bun-galow for us. That had cost him £2,500. It put him under a lot of pressure.”

I ask if he has ever considered moving out of Mexborough. “I have considered it,” he says, “maybe towards round here where it’s a little quieter.” So not far then.

For Dennis it’s home, and almost every part of it. Because for a town that has consistently won the award for Brit-ain’s worst place to live he has invested in half of it.

Between tidily stacking trebles, he takes momentary pauses to fill me in with the latest gossip on the Mexbor-ough property scene.

“If you want to buy a cheap prop-erty, the station house is up for sale - £40,000 – that’s cheap that. I mean obviously you have the trains going by every twenty minutes.”

I had passed through the station on my way to meet Dennis. I was surprised to see a small aquarium occupying the centre of the waiting room, but was de-tracted from this curious feature by the station operator, who was eager to lock up and see me out into the rain.

“It’s got three bedrooms upstairs,” Dennis continues. “It’s a nice property.”

Well maybe, but I’m not sure how many people would appreciate the 6.10am to Leeds speeding through their Sunday lie in.

Unless prompted he talks very lit-tle about the game he has become renowned worldwide for. Instead, he

seems much more at home talking DIY and his latest renovation projects. A past time, which, he plans, will see him through retirement.

Typing his score into the electronic score board he tells me he had once considered joining the licensing trade. “My wife wasn’t interested.” he says, in a schoolboy sigh of defeat. “She said it breaks up too many marriages.”

To be honest I wouldn’t have rated him as a decent publican anyway. Just when I thought it impossible to not mention darts without alluding refer-ence to alcohol, Dennis fills me with dissapointment. For the duration of the

night he slowly nursed a pint of Tropi-cana. From a man who lived half his life cleaning coal out of his fingernails, I was hoping orange squash would come only second to drinking arsenic in public.

“I’m not drinking tonight,” he says, shaking his jowls at the very prospect.

“I had a heavy weekend in Ireland”. Since making a full recovery from pros-tate cancer earlier this year, the exhibi-tion work has been coming in thick and fast, and on this occassion he had taken full advantage of the landlord’s hospital-ity.

“The exhibitions help you pay for all the travel. When you go to some tour-naments it’s £100 a time to enter. If you don’t win or progress two or three rounds then you lose money.” Not something I thought a priority for a man competing for £5m in PDC prize money this year. And that’s not to men-tion a queuing list of sponsorships and endorsements he has topping up the balance.

“Plus it’s all about being close to your fans, isn’t it Dennis?” Meet Trevor, Den-nis’ bona fide practice partner of two years and, it seems, his personal pro-moter (whether or not Dennis himself

really appreciates this). Every now and then he pops up into

the conversation with a plug for their up and coming charity events or to remind Dennis of his past achievements. “He were a great player in the eighties,” he assures me. “Go on, tell ‘em Den, you always had the potential.”

Dennis is quick to shrug off all accu-sations adding to the thought that he never planned on turning professional.

“I had never even thought about it. I had my own business and had been self-employed since I was twenty. As soon as I won t’Embassy I turned professional. That’s when I sold me wagon.”

Everything about Dennis Priestley is so heart-warmingly humble. Especially when you compare him to his closest rival, Phil Taylor, whose modesty is on a par with Christiano Ronaldo during a pre-miership goal celebra-tion. And whose wife can be seen regularly

screaming from the floor at any major tournament, pint in one hand banner in the other. She even allows him to have a practice board in their bedroom.

“My wife isn’t bothered,” says Dennis admittedly but with a sense that she has no reason to be. As far as he’s concerned it’s just another job.

“She has always supported me; I mean our family holidays were to camp sites where the darts tournaments were,” he chuckles. “Yep we did that for years”.

The final whistle blows on the Chelsea - Barcelona game, Trevor has already left and I get my subtle queue to leave. “There will be a quiz going on in here soon,” he says, taking his black, soft leather jacket off the back of his chair and swinging it over his shoulders.

“I’ll give you a lift back to the station.” He says this excitedly, and I soon dis-cover why. Prominently parked in the pub car park is a gleaming new Nissan Torrino.

“I bought it last week,” he boasts, as I struggle to mount the giant step into the passenger seat.

As we drive out of the village the satel-lite navigation flashes up. I’m not en-tirely sure why he needs it. Apparently

Our family holidays were to camp sites where the darts tournaments were ...we did that for years

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“.”


he has been taking the route to and from the village since he was sixteen years old.

We approach a roundabout and he points to a spot on the satellite screen.

“You see that there,” he says in a pro-fessor like manner. I look down at the screen but his chubby fingers display-ing all manner of brash gold bling is blocking the spectacle of his excitement. “That’s the roundabout, there. You see?” He’s pointing out of the window now but turns his head to catch a glimpse of my reaction.

Taking a slight detour, we pass the houses he grew up in, with a guided commentary to go with it. As we cross a junction he points towards a shop unit he has just bought.

“Me dad and grandad used to rent it in the 1950s,” he says. “An old lady used to live in the back. Me son started renting it for his plumbing gear. He asked me to buy it so I’m now in the process for planning five one-bedroom flats at the back.

“They will be great for you.” he adds. Although Dennis is proving himself as an outstanding property developer I am seriously beginning to question his sales technique.

Before pulling into a car park we pass a Wetherspoon’s and I’m told if I’m ever in the area again then that’s the place to be.

He parks up the 4x4 Torrino across three spaces and points out the station house that’s up for sale. “That’s it there,” he says, “nice house isn’t it?”

On Sid Waddell“You either like him or you don’t. There is no medium with him. He is a very good friend of mine but I think he talks a load of dribble – I think they call it verbal di-arrhoea. He loves pool, but he can’t play for toffee.”On Phil Taylor“Resentment? From me? No. I think my friends and family feel it more than what I do. They say if he hadn’t have been for him I would have eight, maybe nine world titles by now. What will be will be. We used to split a lot of prize money in the early years, right up to the year 2000. It was Phil that actually used to say ‘come on are we sharing,’ it was his way of taking the edge off things. It probably benefitted him more than me. On Jelle Klaasen“He is a nice bloke but he is 28th in the world for a reason – there are 27 bet-ter than him. I’ve played him a couple of times and beat him 6 - 1 twice. They want a young kid, and he’s Dutch. I think Dutch television had something to do with it.”On retirement“I will probably retire in another 14-15 months. I can’t keep going on forever. It’s too demanding with all the travelling, there is virtually something every weekOn technology“I don’t even own a computer. My son persuaded me to get a website but it’s a guy in Australia that actually puts it together - I’ve not even met him.

Dennis Priestley up close and personal

Dutch superstar, Jelle Klaasen

Above, Priestley winning his first world Embassy title in 1991. Above and below, old friends, Priestley and Taylor


Above, transformed, the community hall at Hull turned into a darts theatre of dreams. Right, Teejay ‘the Tornado’ Beetham. Below left, Jake ’The Ace’ Patchett, 13 winning the Hull teenage open in 2008. Below right, kids warming up for the friendship open between England and Scotland in 2008.

Superstars of the Oche

ust off the main road in a back-street community centre in Hull there a quiet revolution is stirring. As the darts players of the

future line up, waiting silently for their turn to toe the oche, founder and former darts pro John ‘JJ’ Gibbs is rev-elling in the success of the country’s first darts “school of excellence”.

Each Saturday afternoon the young-sters, aged from five to 21, hammer the half dozen darts boards with an array of treble 20s and double top finishes. The order of the day is sand-wiches and squash and the only fumes and fug they will gasp is the lingering dry ice.

‘They’re assassins with smiles,’ says JJ, who has already produced a hand-ful of world class youth champions.

Take Jake Patrick. He won the un-der-16 mixed individuals at the age of 13. And TeeJay ‘The Tornado’ Beetham. He reached the finals of the under-18 youth championship when he was just eight.

And let’s not forget Tommy the ‘Machine Gun’. “When he first joined the school he was wrapped round his mum’s ankles – five weeks later he was a different child” says JJ, who learnt his game juggling a pint and fag in one hand and his darts in the other.

The latest addition to the school is three-year-old Nathan Bradley, tipped to be a future world champion by the age of 15.

What started in Hull three and a half years ago has become a nationwide template. Last year kids from Wolver-hampton were invited to improve their skills in the area’s first darts academy. And in Hampshire, The Petersfield School of Darts is now well and truly on its way to producing the crème de la crème of sporting profession-als. It seems everyone is keen to jump on the band wagon, with schools no exception –teachers up and down the country are bidding to incorporate darts into the classroom to sharpen numeracy skills.

According to JJ, all his students are at the top of their class in maths. “It doesn’t matter what level the kids were achieving at school before hand.

“I can say to Tommy, give us 90 and without even thinking he’ll shout, ‘tre-ble eighteen –double eighteen’.

J


In JJ’s day it was very different. The pub circuits were the only way to get on in the game and you were lucky if you could earn enough to give up your day job. JJ was a carpenter by trade, Phil Taylor had the glamorous job of making toilet handles in Stoke-on-Trent’s grimy pot banks, and Den-nis Priestley was a coal merchant.

“These children – they want to be professionals and I am training them to be athletes,” says JJ, taking another long, hard pull on his cigarette.

“Darts is very popular again, espe-cially in Hull.

“But there are not a lot of people playing,’’ he adds. There is no doubt the game is at odds with itself. The number of teams playing in UK pub leagues is dwindling. But in February

John ‘JJ’ Gibbs

“ .”

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a record 8,000 fans packed out the new Liverpool Echo Arena for Sky’s touring Pre-mier League darts tourna-ment– ironic since this was a city where the game was banned in pubs because it “incited drunkenness”.

Last year 120,000 head-strong fans attended Pro-fessional Darts Corporation events. But for JJ the new wave of darts fans are noth-ing short of “orchestrated hooligans - lager louts who don’t even play the game”.

He is confident that schools like his are the future of the game. In Hol-land, a similar system has seen the rise of players like 18-year-old Michael Van Gerwen and 24-year-old Jelle Klaasen (darts sud-denly became quite cool when Klaasen introduced a lip piercing to the stage on his way to winning the 2006 BDO world championship).

“The Dutch have got it right,” JJ declares. “I mean, they may not be as advanced as us in their tech-nique but the sport there is funded by the government.

“All I get back from the government here is a letter without a postage stamp – if you know what I mean.

“I’ve got 13 meetings coming up so we can get fund-ing for new boards, light bulbs and darts. You have to be seen to be going through the proce-dure, otherwise you get nothing.”

JJ plans to open a further three schools and start

the first ever darts scholarship, where-by students will attend college three days a week and the rest of the time training.

“The majority of the kids are from one parent families, it’s quite a de-prived area but darts gives them a sense of purpose.

“I will never be able to give back to darts what darts has given me – but I’ll try.”

“I’ll say, ‘give me an-other’, and I’ll get ‘double tops, bull.’”

JJ’s approach is as regi-mented as Phil Taylor’s liver and onion oatcake diet in the build up to a big tournament.

“I run a strict regime at the centre, I won’t al-low any shouting. Life is about other people’s thoughts and it is slowly absorbing into them. I’ve only had to expel one boy, and that was for bul-lying.”

The kids all have uni-forms, too. However, we are not talking grey socks and blazers. Instead, professional black and white darts shirts, with their names and those of sponsors stitched on the sleeves.

“I get mothers coming up to me saying they’ve just bought young Johnny the latest Phil Taylor shirt – I say that’s fine, but they can’t wear it to come here, I tell them. I like everyone to be on an equal level.

“I like to think that my way is the right way” says JJ, lighting a cigarette.

“I only have to look at them and they stop what they’re doing.

“If I told them I was going to walk on water they would probably believe me.”

His motto is simple: “It’s like any-thing in life, you only get out of it what you put in.” A tall order for those aspiring to the levels seen in the Pro-fessional Darts Corporation in recent years.

If darts hasn’t already undergone a renaissance with Phil Taylor’s 14th world title, then this surely is it. In 2003, darts was recognised as a sport (the BDO got round that one by calcu-lating the distance walked, 16 miles, by England captain Martin Adams during the World Professional Champi-onship up and down the oche). It has bid to be a sport in the 2012 Olympic Games and kids here want the fast track to stardom – and the ever grow-ing amount of prize money.

If I told them I was going to walk on water they would probably believe me.


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