Those who kick-started the new year with rather intensive exercise regimes, all part of their very admirable resolutions to become finely-tuned athletes, might have been a bit sniffy towards those of us who spent the entire weekend on the couch watching events in Ally Pally.
But if you rose from said couch, as you should have done, every time the crowd broke in to ‘Stand up if you love the darts’, then you’d have performed more squat-like movements than the fitness crowd will manage by this time next year. In that sense, then, being a darts-watcher is a high octane, carb-incinerating activity.
And it’s hard not to love the darts when it’s been as tremendous as these particular World Championships have been, the crowd, of course, a major part of the attraction. Especially that fella with the “Make cracker hats much bigger” sign.
More comforting, though, is that Ally Pally has been a warm reminder of our pre-Covid days when we didn't have a care in the world
Speaking of the crowd. While there have been far-too-many-to-count stand-out performances during the tournament, not least from the nine-dart-lads, nobody has performed greater heroics than the Sky sound people, having had to be on high-muting alert for the entire three weeks. Especially when, say, the crowd began singing “na-na, na-na, na-na, na-na-na-na - Boris is a ****, Boris is a ****”.
It’s actually been a very rough tournament for the PM. If Ally Pally was his constituency, he’d most likely lose his deposit next time around. Eg all that singing of “Stand up if you haaaaaate Boris”, the “All round to Boris’s after” sign, and the one that read “This is a business meeting” under a drawing of cheese and wine.
More comforting, though, is that Ally Pally has been a warm reminder of our pre-Covid days when we didn’t have a care in the world, an oasis, not a mask in sight and the only thing socially distancing the crowd the space taken up by the litre jugs of lager between them.
Not, alas, that Ally Pally has been a Covid-free zone, several players having to withdraw after positive tests, including the legend that is Michael van Gerwen. It reached a point last week where you’d have thought that if you turned up at the door with some arrows in your pocket, you’d receive a bye in to the World Championship final.
Happily, eight men tested negative so we had ourselves a quarter-final line-up, the evening session kicking off with Peter Wright v Callan Rydz. Epic. "If you want sporting drama you've come to the right place," said Sky's Stuart Pyke, "it never fails to disappoint."
Stuart, in fairness, was probably a bit befuddled by that "Mike Dean Slaughters Chickens" sign in the crowd, a reference - thanks Google - to the Premier League referee killing 140,000 chicks a day when he worked in a chicken factory. Random, that. And then there was the fella in a mankini, just to the left of the "Your Dad Sells Avon" sign.
The last of the quarter-finals had the Sky sound people on high alert again because it featured defending champion Gerwyn ‘The Iceman’ Price who is Welsh, so naturally the crowd had been serenading him all week with “you know what you are, you know what you are, you’re a sheep shagger, you know what you are”.
Gerwyn finally had enough during the eighth set against Michael ‘Bully Boy’ Smith, drawing the officials’ attention to a person in the crowd, possibly the one in the mankini, and asking for them to be removed for persistently making loud allegations about his relationship with sheep.
Gerwyn, sort of darts' Bryson DeChambeau, is such a divisive figure there might have been those who felt the sheep were the offended parties here, but Stuart and Mark Webster, in the Sky commentary box, were appalled, their protestations against the abuse only falling silent when the crowd, including the person in the mankini, began singing 'Glod shlave the Qlueeeeeen'.
Inspired, Merseyside’s Bully Boy melted Caerphilly’s Iceman who took his defeat well, apart from that moment he took to social media and posted “CHEATS”.
A bitter defeat, then, his exit many things, apart from sheepish.
