Darts targets sporting streak

Mick Dennis13 April 2012

Where do you stand on darts? Obviously not in front of the board, but what I mean is: do you think darts is a sport?

The organisers of the Embassy World Champion-ship are desperate for darts to be regarded as a serious sport and I do mean desperate.

So desperate, in fact, that they say Emma Hughes has finally proved that it is definitely a sport.

She was the blonde who became the first streaker at a darts event last week.

You would have thought that streaking at darts is fairly hazardous and not the sort of naked ambition the authorities would want to encourage.

But they were overjoyed by the exposure and all the newspaper sniggering about double tops.

The official Championship website boasted that Emma's streak demonstrated that darts was definitely a sport because there have also been famous streakers at rugby internationals, Wimbledon tennis and cricket Test matches.

This is bonkers, of course, because there have also been streakers at my local shopping mall and, despite what my wife may believe, shopping is not a sport.

But then darts officials seldom let logic hamper their enthusiasm.

They seem to think that daft nicknames add some sort of glamour. So, in the men's World Championship final at the weekend, John 'Boy' Walton beat Ted 'The Count' Hankey after they'd beaten two gentlemen billed as 'The Viking' and 'The Mouth of the South' in the semi-finals.

Darts nicknames became obligatory once they had been popularised by Eric Bristow, who - as you will remember - was called 'The Crafty Cockney'.

I never worked out why he was supposed to be crafty, because he didn't sneak up and chuck his darts when we were all expecting him to do something else.

The current crop of nicknames are just as silly and lacking in thought. Why isn't Ted Hankey called 'The Bogeyman'?

Better still, why not drop the nicknames entirely? Surely it's time to say "Goodnight, John Boy".

If darts wants to be taken seriously, it has got to start taking itself seriously.

Some of us knew that Cole was no ordinary Joe

Next day, Tord Grip, Eriksson's right-hand man, and Harry Redknapp, the West Ham manager, both reported that Eriksson had been very impressed by Cole.

He's not the first. There are people in the Standard Sport office who started going to youth team and academy games at West Ham a couple of years ago to watch Cole because word had reached them that he had a precocious talent.

In those days young Cole (he was called Joey then), was extremely reluctant to give interviews and Redknapp protected him, sensibly, much as Alex Ferguson used to guard and guide the young Ryan Giggs a few years ago.

Now Cole has matured emotionally and is confident enough to talk brightly about football. He still has a blatant love affair with the ball, which is a joy to behold, but he's less inclined to do party tricks with the ball for the sake of it and more determined to use his sleights of feet for the team.

Physically, however, Cole still has some maturing to do. He still has the build of a 19-year-old adolescent, which is what he is. He doesn't get knocked off the ball by beefy opponents, as he did when he first broke into the Premiership, but he does run out of puff in the second half of matches.

The club remain admirably protective of him and, because they are sure there is more to come from him yet, tell people that it may be a tad early to throw the kid into the England team.

But he already looks better than anyone else we've got. The thought of our forwards running on to those passes which he can clip over the top of defences is enough to make you drool.

A few words from the Wise

GQ

Six of the best has become one of the worst

But that was back in the days when Danny Baker hosted it and made long drives home from matches entertaining with his deliberately provocative views and determination to seek out uproarious anecdotes from the fanatics who play and watch football.

Then David Mellor took over the Six-O-Six spot and here, of course, I have to declare a bias because he's a fellow Standard Sport columnist.

I used to find his Saturday show exasperating because he was always berating referees - but it was compulsive listening because he used to deal with issues and get his callers to talk about the experience of watching football rather than just talk about football. Fans who had been shoddily treated by police or stewards or had a grievance about ticket sales would ring Mellor and then he'd give the authorities a grilling on their behalf.

Now Richard Littlejohn has the show and, much as I like him, Six-O-Six has degenerated into a series of calls from dullards who want to tell him how bad their team is and how they "should be a top six club."

Apparently there are at least 15 clubs who should be in the top six.

The callers all talk football-speak and they all talk testicles. "At the end of the day, Richard, the boys haven't done the business."

Last weekend the show was enlivened by a hoax call. A bloke claiming to be a Manchester City fan urged the sacking of Joe Royle. Talk about stupid. You couldn't make it up. Littlejohn and his production team worked out later that the caller had probably been a mischievous Manchester United fan.

Then the show lapsed into the usual succession of saddoes droning on about their petty prejudices and small opinions.

Much air time was given to a discussion about whether Coventry are doing the business and whether, at the end of the day, Gordon Strachan will ever get them to do the business.

The level of debate was so stultifying that the few listeners who care a fig about Coventry probably soon joined the rest of the country in screaming at our radios.

Six-O-Six is just not doing the business any more. It's the end of its day.

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