It’s Saturday 14th December, or if you like, Christmas-Darts Eve. Christmas shopping, wrapping, delivering has all been done, I’ve frantically packed for the first nine days and met Andrew and Dean on the M4 still coughing and spluttering from the recent man flu and wondering how I’m possibly going to cope on stage, but more of that later. We arrived at our hotel at just about midnight so a nice lie-in on Sunday was followed by doing not very much at all, apart from heading to Boots and on the recommendation of Scott Gibling, grabbing some DayNurse to try to shift this (I’m going to keep this PG) terribly annoying dry cough (non-drowsy pills obviously, nobody wants a sleeping ref on stage on Night One!). I jump in the car with Russ Bray about 4.10pm to get down to the venue early – PaddyPower are doing a challenge at the beginning of every session in the Fans Village. Every fan who wants to play has three darts, and if they can beat the score of “Mace The Ace” Chris Mason, they win a cash prize. We’re rotating refereeing duties for that throughout the event so I said I would do the first one.
Hanging around our area of the amazing Fans Village just ten minutes before the doors opened was certainly a moment. The place is eerily quiet, as if a storm is approaching. That storm being the most anticipated darts tournament in history. People are rushing about putting the final touches on weeks, if not months worth, of preparation. The hall is eerily quiet but with a growing sense of people bracing themselves for the next twenty-eight sessions in twenty-one days. As the clock ticks to 5.30pm, the time the doors open, the food stalls are ready and waiting, the bar staff are all lined up ready to serve as if they are about to go into some sort of battle and that eerie feeling subsides as the volume is turned up on the music to let us all know that it’s here! The most anticipated darts tournament of all time is finally upon us! The fans start swarming in, and many of them make their way over to us!
Chris Mason is in fine form, at one point hitting five perfect darts, but we give away seven or eight cash prizes and all the fans enjoy it. We have fans from Australia to Germany, underlining just how global the appeal of this tournament is. I’m refereeing the very first match of the tournament between Thibault Tricole and Joe Comito. Lots of nerves for the curtain-raiser but Thibault goes through and my work is done for the night apart from second refereeing the last game. Then from Day Two up until Christmas, the officials split into two teams. One team has George Noble and Charlie Corstorphine as referees with Charlie Gardner and Mark Walker as markers. The other team has myself and Kirk Bevins as refs, Andrew Davies and Scott Gibling as markers. Each team does two sessions “on” and two sessions “off”, so Team George/Charlie do Day Two afternoon session after the opening night, which means my team come in to do Day Two evening and Day Three afternoon and so on. It works really well because it means we can leave the venue to have some down time to do Christmas shopping, have a drink, something to eat and just generally relax, away from what is a very full-on and intense tournament. After Christmas, when there are only three matches per session, we’ll be in every session.
I manage to squeeze in a gym session (I must get back into that regularly!), before heading in for Day Two evening session. My two matches go smoothly including Gerwyn Price’s bow against Keane Barry. The voice isn’t perfect (my colleagues would now be asking when is it ever?!) but the DayNurse is certainly helping. Day Three afternoon and I’m back in the Fans Village before MC’ing the nine-dart challenge on stage and doing Games One and Three. Kirk and I are rotating so one session he does One and Three and the next session I do One and Three and so on. I’m writing this just after finishing a lovely Turkish meal with the team in a restaurant close by to our hotel, and Luke Littler’s won the Young Sports Personality of the Year and come runner-up in the main event! What a wonderful achievement, and just underlines what an impact he’s made across sport, let alone darts. May he keep transcending this sport we all know and love!
