When you want something really badly and have been striving to attain it for an elongated period of time, getting over the line for the first time – or if there’s been a sustantial interval between drinks – can be fiercely difficult. The St Peter’s, Dunboyne hurlers, who haven’t won the Meath SHC since 1914, or Mayo’s footballers, who have strove to bring Sam Maguire into the west since 1951, would understand.
Compared to the cases listed above, Michael Smith again coming up short in the PDC World Darts Championship climax seems mundane. Though no less upsetting for the man himself. Even a concrete exterior is subject to frailty if taking enough of a pounding.
Well, it wasn’t so much a pounding, just that the gargantuan levels the St Helen’s man had been producing throughout the tournament didn’t seem to be there when they were needed most. Early on at least.
Allowing Peter Wright almost glide through the first two sets without much by way of riposte. However, with the two tungsten throwers that were in position it was always likely the treble 20 bed was going to take an absolute battering.
Which it duly did as Smith mopped up the third set, and though Scotland’s Wright bounced back to take fourth, the man in pursuit had noticably and courageously worked his way back into the contest.
Wright’s propensity to be meddlesome with his equipment is the stuff of legend at this stage. Though even by his own uneasy standards, he seemed to go particularly haywire for a period last night, going through at least three sets of darts with a rapidity that would make Ricky Evans look sluggish.
Rather than settling the Mendham man, mind you, it initially appeared to throw him into a tailspin as Smith rallied to lead 4-3 and then 5-4 and you wondered could the 2020 winner rally again to save his skin.
Not only did he save himself, he produced darts of such mesmeric quality one could only wonder what gems the man after whom the gigantic trophy for the event was named was waxing with in the commentary box far away.
It wasn’t that the ultimately vanquished warrior did a whole lot wrong. If anything, he appeared purely exasperated at the durability of his 51-year-old adversary. By the time Wright had his hands on the Sid Waddell Trophy for a second time, the pair had shared over 40 180s between them.
With such astonishing scoring having prevailed throughout the enthralling entertainment, it was always going to take something out of the ordinary to split the irresistable force and the immovable object.
Cue ‘Snakebite’ venomously taking out three finishes of 120+ endorsing that his self confidence was justified in more than just a nifty hair do!
Overall, Wright’s all round excellence, not only over the last three weeks but throughout yhe season made him a most deserving winner. Smith’s time will come, and nobody will begrudge it to him when it does.
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