One of the perks of being a journeyman sports betting hack is the press pass that blags you into events which would normally cost you a pretty penny to enter. And the glory of blagging your way into a Darts event is the dress code which demands you dress-down and not dress-up.
It’s a Sunday night, the opening night of the Unibet Darts Grand Prix in the Citywest Hotel complex in the outskirts of Dublin. I’m wearing jeans and a jumper. Approaching my ‘invited guests and media’ entrance, equipped with no red carpet, I quickly realise I’m over-dressed. I awkwardly walk pass a guy with a traffic cone on his head wearing Dutch wooden clogs on his feet, he’s deep in conversation with a Ninja Turtle.
This is a venue I’m familiar with. I was here just last week sat alongside 1,200 Frenchmen in the old ballroom of the Citywest’s Hotel, I was one of around fifty locals trying to keep the Winamax Six-Max Poker title ‘at home’. But as it serves as the unofficial ‘French Poker Championship’ we had little chance. As for the bigger adjoining convention centre, it was playing host to a bridal gown and wedding exhibition at the time.
There could be no bigger contrast. Wannabe wives preparing for marital bliss and harmony with an adoring husband opposed to blokes that want to do some serious gambling drinking and enjoy some all-round decadence.
Place your bets
As a drinking, gambling married hybrid I head directly to the betting shop to catch up with an old friend, Gary Wiltshire. ‘Big Gary’ used to work alongside John Parrot reporting from the betting ring at Royal Ascot and Aintree when racing was still on the BBC’s menu. Before that he found fame as the bookie who lost £1 million laying the final leg of Frankie Dettori’s ‘Magnificent Seven’, Fujiyama Crest, to lose.
22 years and one day since, a lot of water has flowed under a lot of bridges but Gary remains an old school bookie through and through. He’s happy here, taking the punters on, playing the odds and not feeding his bets into the Betfair Betting Exchange and simply acting as a ‘broker’.
“The games f****d son,” he tells me. He’s been calling me ‘son’ for 30 years. It was not a compliment back then, I quite like it now. Wiltshire is one of many traditional layers who have seen the art of bookmaking disappear, that Betfair machine has a lot to answer for. In the same way walkie-talkies put an end to another betting art-form, tic-tac, Betfair removed chalk boards and satchels and the art of compiling odds and balancing a book using a clerk and leger.
Anyway, he’s laid Barneveld for some good money to win 2-0. “I’ve done it here,” he says pointing to a small screen before him in the shops back room, “never mind it’s a long week and times on my side.” I leave him to his monitor and stack of slips he’s wading through, most have fivers and tenner bets written on them. Later I watched the Dutchman claw back from the brink to win 2-1 in a match he could have easily lost 2-0 to Ricky Evans. Gary got some profits here and he would go on to “win small” over the course of the week.
Three pints or four?
The betting booth apart, two other places are doing a brisk business. What many would describe as a fancy dress shop – officially a PDC merchandise outlet complete with traffic cone hats – and the makeshift Fosters branded bar. It’s a fact this massive hotel complex does not serve the Australian beer 51 weeks year but when the darts road show pulls into town, they bring their own official beer with them.
It is €6 for a pint of €15 for a pitcher which I’m informed represents three pints. I don’t need a brain like Gary Wiltshire’s to realise this represents value but I buy an over-priced bottle of Pepsi instead. I’ve been dry for two days now. Incidentally, the last time I visited a Premier League Darts event I wasn’t on a sabbatical, that was in Belfast where the beer worked out cheaper but the minimum sale per-customer was four-pints with your purchase handed over in a cardboard carrycase. Yes, I did say ‘minimum’.
Responsible drinking and Darts do not belong in the same sentence and that explains away the three people I saw ejected during the course of the evening. This is a glorified pub and one big piss-up with entertainment.
Pull up a seat
I’m told there’s 1,100 people in the venue, at a guess that’s a quarter of what it can accommodate, but this is the opening night of games and while spectators will see eight matches on the opening two nights – compared to four later in the week, two on semi-final night and just one during next weekend’s final night – the attendance grows as the competition goes on.
I take a seat, alongside two pitchers of beer and opposite Captain America, prior to Michael van Gerwen’s clash against Steve Lennon. The crowd are clearly torn, in awe at the greatness of MVG while desperately wanting Lennon, who hails from nearby Carlow, to pull a massive upset. But it becomes apparent no one is truly fanatical about these or any individual player as every 180 and impressive checkout is given a cheer in equal measure. Ultimately Lennon plays well, MVG plays better and he quickly dispatches his rival two-sets-to-nil.
Lounge around
Unable to handle too much excitement it’s the player’s lounge next for me. And what a contrast, players’ friends and family members sat around a small silent TV screen in a big room respectfully making very little noise.
The reason for the library-esque atmosphere is the players practice area, cordoned off by jet black 10ft-high petitioning, its single entrance is guarded by security staff. I struggle to understand why players warm-up in such a sterile environment, in 30 minutes they will be performing before TV cameras and a huge crowd of lunatics chanting things like “stand-up if you love the darts”.
I sit for a while clutching a pint of Fosters – ordered without thinking – watching the silent TV screen sat alongside former World Champion Keith Deller. We have never met before, he starts ‘talking darts’ to me, clearly mistaking me with someone who knows a little more than the first thing about this sport. I nod and mumble my way through the awkwardness.
Just behind us the current World Champion, Rob Cross and World No. 9 Michael Smith are taking it in turns throwing arrows at the one and only dart-board in this room which is not hidden away behind guarded walls. It’s weird seeing someone which has become so familiar to you wearing something other than the dazzling t-shirt which you believed he slept in and could have been cradled in.
No one’s paying any attention to the duo who have netted over £2 million in prize-money during their short careers. Before darts found them they were a trainee joiner and electrician. Deller gives me a nudge as I ponder what could have been for them, “He’ll win tomorrow,” he says pointing to a burly and menacing looking doorman/bouncer type that goes walking by.
I left the lounge before realising said doorman was actually Premier League star Gerywn Price. I don’t know what he did before darts, maybe he was a bouncer but given his darts nickname is ‘The Iceman’ and his entrance music is ‘Ice Ice Baby’, he may well have driven an ice-cream van around the streets of Caerphilly.
Banana skin
The first pint has gone down all too well but not wanting to be stereotyped I head to the hotel bar for the second. Here I find darts referee George Noble. We met just the once a few years back and I’m comfortable enough with him to ask who he fancies for the tournament.
“This place is a graveyard,” he exclaims. “Phil Taylor got knocked-out of this competition in the first round seven times. It’s the double-in format, it’s only used in this tournament and it buggers up the best of ‘em. There’s no way all the seeds will go through the first round, in fact I thought van Gerwen could have gone out tonight. This Irish lad, Lennon, he can really play and I thought he could have been a banana-skin for MVG to slip-up on.”
His prediction was proven to be correct 24 hours later as the No. 3 seed, Rob Cross succumbed to veteran Steve Beaton. That was too late for me I’d already hot-footed it back to the main arena, urgently brushing aside two guys in fancy dress that appeared to be sitting on Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin’s shoulders, to see my mate Gary Wiltshire and back Gary Anderson to lose the final match of the night.
It was a bad investment. And while I felt sick, I was not as poorly as the woman decked out on the floor receiving medical attention at the back of the auditorium. The local judges were going 3/1 she was overcome with emotion after seeing Gary Anderson in the flesh and 2/7 she had drunk too many pints of Fosters.
Ultimately she was the fourth person escorted off of the property and, by local standards, the night was still early and darting week still young.
