For those that don’t know, the corridor at Bahrain Airport after you get off the plane is the longest corridor in the world. I don’t care what the Guinness Book of Records says, the builders who built that corridor must have come to the conclusion that any passengers to the country clearly need to get their steps in before doing anything else. So as I’m walking down this corridor I do the responsible thing and check my pockets again to make sure I haven’t left anything….phone, wallet, keys, passport……where’s my passport? Not in that pocket, not in that pocket. Where is my passport, oh my god where’s my passport? Cue an awkward U-turn in front of all the players, staff, the entire world of the PDC to walk furiously (I don’t run, under any circumstances) to try to locate my passport on the plane so I don’t get rejected into the country. Thankfully, the fabulous British Airways staff found it in the aisle next to the seat I was sitting in. It must have fallen out of my pocket as I stood up. A good start to the event! Imagine walking ALL the way down that corridor to then double back. The plane would have probably taken off again.
A brilliant reception at the British Embassy of Bahrain was followed by the media launch at the rugby club, and after the two days of darts it was the customary through-the-night flight back to London Heathrow, mere hours after Stephen Bunting had been crowned champion. Landing at Heathrow at 6am and turning off airplane mode and my phone blows up with notifications. I was like what is this and it turns out that The Sun, and ITV Sport amongst others have captured the worst possible photo of me after I had told the crowd to stop whistling! Oh lord. I mean, yeah, I was angry…how dare people be whistling, right?! Right?! With that said, the camera cut to me at just the wrong moment but yeah, now it’s in The Sun and ITV Sport’s X account are leading with the caption “Don’t mess with Huw Ware!” A trawl through social media….oh lord there are memes. It’s a meme! What is life? Bring back the days of losing your passport.
A couple of weeks later and it’s the newly-revived Winmau World Masters in Milton Keynes. A lot of work went into launching the podcast in those two weeks (Tops and Tales, available everywhere you get your podcasts from…go on check it out, you know you want to!) and I couldn’t be more grateful to Luke Littler, Nathan Aspinall, Peter Wright and Chris Dobey who gave up their time to record with me. They had no idea what they were walking into but they came and did it, and all of them spoke and came across so well and gave the episodes the quality I was hoping we would get, so I’m very grateful to them. They’ll definitely be back on now that all episodes are going to be available to watch on YouTube and TikTok from Series Two onwards.
I refereed the final of the World Masters and also spent some time up on the Winmau VIP balcony. Honestly, I thought this tournament was one of the best World Masters I can remember. The format threw up some very exciting and engaging games, not least the final which went all the way to a sudden death leg. What Winmau and the PDC did with the tournament was fantastic and is a breath of fresh air to the PDC calendar.
In my next blog which isn’t too far away I’ll be describing the process of what it’s like to record a podcast. Spoilers: it’s blood, sweat and tears. All the positive feedback and comments kept me going though and without that support from all of you we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to get cameras and start releasing on YouTube and TikTok (as well as all the usual platforms), so thank you. We’re not far away from a start date now for Series Two, all will be revealed very shortly. Thank you all for your patience, it will have been worth the wait! Until then, thank you for reading, take care and keep loving the darts!
