PDC players enjoy a well earned weekend off this weekend as most of them well be locked away practicing hard with the run up to the Skybet World Grand Prix starting with the PDPA tournament in Holland Saturday week. A few have a wedding to attend this Saturday but the rest will be praticing hard.
The 2007 premier league will be extended to 8 players this year with the top 6 in the ranks going through automatically and 2 wild cards. I'm going to predict that the automatic spots go to Lloyd, Taylor, Baxter, Priestley, Manley, Mardle with the 2 wild cards going to Barneveld and Ade Lewis. If so it'll be a competitive league and with that field I cant see Taylor maintaining his unbeaten league showing stretching to a 3rd year.
The ranking system can be cruel sometimes. Wozza is defending 44 points in the Grand Prix in 2 weeks time. He is defending this many due to him getting to the final in 2004 so in order for Wozza to go up the rankings before the end of October nothing other than a win will do him. As Lloyd won it in 2004 he will defend 50 and cannot gain any ground what so ever and can only maintain his points score by winning the tournament again. That also means that because Taylor was beaten in the first round in 2004 he will defend no points and will sit on top as official number one at the end of the Grand Prix.
If you check the planet darts website today you will see the 2007 calendar already out with over £2 million up for grabs on TV tournaments so the game is really expanding now going from strenght to strenght. It also outlines how the ranking system will change in January and go to a golf style order of merit which will really sort out the men from the boys and as I said a few weeks ago you'll see some different faces appearing on TV from there on in.
In my blog the other day I never actually said the perpetual trophy that Tom Kirby won was the Shay O Brien trophy. I meant to include that in as Tom was in fact a great friend to Shay and how fitting it was that Big Tom won it and what was even more fitting was the fact he beat Wade in the final. Both Tom and Anto would probably miss Shay on the darts scene more than anybody else and I for one was delighted to see them both face off as Shay who died suddenly early on in the year would have loved that dearly. A gentleman of the game and Dublin Darts is a lesser place without him.
Has anyone seen the Showbiz Darts that has been on challenge TV all this week and for the next coming weeks. The BDO never cease to amaze me and I cant believe they put their players names to that. Its unprofessional with bad language( one former World Champion cursing and swearing), drinking on stage and in front of cameras and amazingly bad darts. Basically every the BDO has stood for since 1993. Its not great and although the BDO will always be the base of the game in getting people playing at county level and so on its not the PDC as the P as everyone knows stands for professional and thats a shame. Showbiz darts is played at the Lakeside which is shocking when you think about it. The seen of some of the greatest ever matches like Bristowe V Deller, Taylor V Gregory, Lowe V Warriner, Burnett V Beaton all at World Final level ruined when you see the likes of Johnny Vegas up against Kevin Webster from Coronation street. Ironically the base of the split in 1993 was TV coverage and the lack of it provided by the BDO and then you see this sort of rot on your tele. Have a think about it.......... There will never be a united World Championship again and I dont think we want one.
1 comment:
You have no right to run down the BDO that is where all the top players in the world started and are taken away because of sky and Barry Hearne and their money.The BDO is for the working class the PDC is for greed.I think the PDC stands for Players Don't Care they're getting their appearance money the top one's anyway so they don't give a rats ass.The reason all the player's leave the BDO to go to the PDC is pure and simple money so don't go onto me about people drinking on stage we all no they are drinking on the PDC at the t.v events as soon as they have an add brake which is every 10minutes the boys go back stage have their scoop and are back on stage 3minutes later.I think you're jealous of the BDO so get over it and stop running them down.
Post a Comment