When it comes to music, my interest diverge from Elvis Presley to Daniel O’Donnell, The Dubliners to The Prodigy. And everything in between. Everyone loves a one hit wonder, though, don’t they?
And so our journey arrives in Milton Keynes in January 2022. The Ladbrokes Masters, hitting the bullseye on another season of darts action. Early on in the evening there were victories for K. Ratajaski of Poland over the German giant, Gabriel Clemens. That was followed by Dave Chisnall whitewashing Stephen Bunting.
Chisnall had to withdraw from last month’s PDC World Championships after going down with Covid-19. If the hunger and accuracy shown here is anything to go by, he could be a man worth following. Not just for the weekend, but the entire season. The only caveat to that is the reality that Chizzy can sometimes resemble a youngster’s backside – you know not what is going to come out of it!
Elsewhere on the first night of the new season, Dimitri van den Bergh beat Ian White, Ryan Searle easily sidestepped Mervyn King, Rob Cross beat Brendan Dolan, Joe Cullen defeated Daryll Gurney and Luke Humphries obliterated Devin Petersen.
For this observer at least, undoubtedly the performance of the night belonged to the great Australian survivor, Simon Whitlock. Before yours truly had any knowledge of or interest in affairs of the arrows, I remember hearing ma talking about him when herself and da used venture to Gogan’s of Dunshaughlin where Anthony himself or Larry O’Brien would have had the action on the television.
“Talented but unlucky” always seemed to be the words affixed uo his file. That fairly well nails it in terms of the longevity and continued excellence on the oche. Indeed, such is the regularity and alacrity with which Whitlock competes in leading events that it seems scarcely credible that the man from the land Down Under has dropped to No. 25 in the world rankings.
He had gone even lower and worked his way back up and judging by last night’s display seems intent on doing so again. Which brings us back to the one hit wonders. Whitlock’s walk-on music is Land Down Under by Men At Work and, to paraphrase a line from same, as he efficiently went about negotiating a way past Dirk Van Duijvenbode, I just smiled and ate a bit of my sandwich!
Thankfully for us darts fans, gut instinct is to think the beard to be feared will be just that for a good while yet. Could he win titles again? Who knows. Either way, here’s looking forward to seeing the man at work again soon!
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