Go on, Surrender to Planet Darts

LIKE that unnecessary third pork pie and the seasonal 9am glass of sherry, darts has become firmly wedged into my ever-increasing list of guilty Yuletide pleasures.

Christmas is a good get-out clause for virtually any out-of-character behaviour that good sense and wise judgement otherwise prevents. Quality Street for breakfast? Well it is Christmas. Port and Irn Bru aperitif? Well it’s only once a year.

That’s why it seems the perfect time of year for a fortnight-long festival of debauchery, or the PDC World Darts Championships as it’s officially known.

The arrow chucking provides me with yet another perfect excuse to brandish the festive “get-out-of-jail” card.

The appalling walk-on music and tacky dancing girls, the wall-to-wall fancy dress and primeval chants of the boisterous, boozed-up hordes. It assaults the senses like nothing else in sport.

The Alexandra Palace may have been created as a place of grandeur where the BBC broadcast its first TV transmission. But the splendour of the Ally Pally in late December is no place for finesse or understatement; it is a shrine to the lairy.

The scene can appear quite unsettling, particularly when the punters who have paid good money to attend seem too caught up in chanting to actually watch the on-stage action.

But on New Year’s Day even the crowd, intermittently at least, paid attention. The final pitted 15-time world champion Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor against the remarkable young pretender Michael Van Gerwen.

The darts the Dutchman produced in the first six sets were extraordinary. Utterly machine-like in their repetitive, pinpoint precision.

Suddenly the sport’s greatest-ever looked frail. The only thing that could stop MVG was himself, or more precisely, his mind.

Under the weight of Van Gerwen’s constant heavy scoring, Taylor was on the ropes as he helplessly watched his rival take aim at a double for a decisive 5-2 lead.

But at that moment it happened. The Dutchman fatally allowed himself a momentary glimpse of the winning line and it finished him.

Suddenly the unerring eye grew wayward. Taylor, as great champions of all sports can, spotted his rival’s weakness and exploited it without mercy or pity.

The Power stormed to the finish, and when his tungsten arrowed unerringly into the winning double 16, I surprised myself by bellowing to acclaim a stunning 16th world title.

And then things all went a bit flat. The ultimate point of celebration had also sparked the end of the party and the start of the hangover.

Just as when the Christmas tree comes down, and the dreaded return to work and routine looms, we have to face facts. It couldn’t last for ever. Or could it?

Just six days after the punters went home and the Ally Pally was busily restored to its stately glory, the gaudy, big-shirted circus rolled up in the unlikely surroundings of Surrey for the rival BDO World Darts Championships.

My pompous side would like to think my tastes are too refined for the festive goings-on at Frimley Green and the Alexandra Palace. That I find it all a bit too garish, obvious and outdated.

This is, of course, blatantly untrue. If I was being truly honest with myself, I’d love it.

Suspend reality, sink umpteen beers and join in the queasy larks. After all, it is Christmas.

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