Darts Greatest Games: Fifty Finest Matches from the World of Darts by Matt Bozeat (Pitch Publishing 2017)

 

Sid Waddell told the armchair enthusiasts that Deller was “not just an underdog, he’s an underpuppy” and asked: “Can Deller do the unthinkable and beat Bristow in the world final?”

For Deller, who threw spring-loaded darts designed to avoid bounce-outs, reaching the final, a fine achievement for a qualifier, wasn’t enough.

He was there to win the World Championship and predicted a 6-3 victory.

He blew six darts at a double to make it happen…

Earlier, the match had swung this way – Deller led 3-1 – then the other – Bristow levelled at 3-3 – then back again.

Deller won the seventh and eighth sets, taking him into a 5-3 lead and just one set away from the World Championship.

In the ninth set, Deller was 64 points away, then 18, then eight, then four…

Six darts at a match-winning double were missed and Deller spent the next two sets “shaking my head. I should have been world champion.”

Ever the opportunist, Bristow showed why commentator Dave Lanning described him as “a burglar” on the oche.

In his youth, Bristow had burgled houses and the North London ne’er-do-well-turned-king-of-darts brought his street cunning to darts. Knowing Deller was vulnerable, his mind elsewhere, Bristow smoothly upped his average by a few points and plundered five legs without reply while Deller chewed over those missed match-winning chances.

When he claimed the opening leg of the 11th and deciding set, Bristow led for the first time in the match and that realisation, the possibility of defeat, snapped Deller out of his ruminations. Either he started throwing his best darts again or he would lose – and he hadn’t come here to lose.

The spell broken, he rediscovered his fluency to break back immediately with a 121 checkout, then hold his throw to leave Bristow needing to do the same to save the match.

Bristow got to a finish first in that fourth leg.

He took aim at 121 with Deller also on a three-dart finish, 138.

Bristow threw 17, then treble 18 and with 50 left, everyone zoomed in on the bull’s-eye. Everyone apart from Bristow, that is. Rather than go for the bull’s-eye to win the leg, Bristow was so sure Deller wouldn’t take out 138 for the match, he threw 18 to leave his favourite double 16.

This wasn’t hubris. Bristow had thought it all through. He reckoned Deller’s mental mastication – “He could have beaten me earlier, he had his chance” – and the awkwardness of the 138 finish – “it was all over the place” – guaranteed he would come back to the oche and have three darts at his favourite double.

Years later, he would think otherwise, saying the pressure would have been greater on Deller had he been faced with a smaller finish. “If he had 58 left he would have been standing behind me thinking: ‘I’ve got two more darts for the title,’” he said, but still, nobody, not just Bristow, really expected Deller to take out 138.

“He’s banking on Deller not doing this!” cried Waddell excitedly and when Deller’s first dart landed in treble 20, there was a chance Bristow had got it wrong.

Deller had taken out big finishes in the earlier rounds of the championship and knew what he was doing. “I didn’t stop,” he said. “There was no way I was going to think about it.”

Had he thought about the importance of the darts he was throwing, his arm would surely have twitched, so Deller ignored the crowd’s growing excitement when he nailed treble 18 and coolly switched across the board to fire his final dart into double 12.

“I have never seen anything like it in my life,” said Waddell while Deller shook his fists above his head in sheer joy.

“It was perhaps the next best thing that could happen to me,” Deller would tell Darts World, “… next to playing for Ipswich Town.”

The Crafty Cockney by Deryk Brown (Futura 1985)

 

Darts Apprentice

Alec Williams was passing a classroom one day when he discovered that Bristow was inside, throwing darts. He saw one dart clip a boy’s ear and was, naturally, horrified. He shouted out that this was highly dangerous. ‘Oh, no, sir,’ came the reply in a chorus. ‘Eric wouldn’t hit anyone unless he meant to. ’

Bristow learned his darts from his father. George used to play, perhaps twice a week, about the time he got married, usually at the Londesborough public house in Stoke Newington. During the years that followed he played little. He did not have the money to go regularly into pubs. George’s interest was not seriously fired until his son showed an aptitude for the game. For two years, from nine to 11, Bristow simply threw darts at the board. After that, he suddenly became good.

Even then, as he threw he would cock his little finger like a man eating lobster at Buckingham Palace — this style, later to become famous, is natural and not affected. Bristow had a natural stance and a natural throw, too, with no apparent effort involved. (This does not mean, of course, that he did not put a vast amount of work into his game.) As soon as he was tall enough, he began to lean towards the board, another characteristic which was to stay with him. There is a school of thought which believes that darts players should not lean because they cannot achieve perfect balance and control if they do. ‘You’ll never make a darts player like that,’ George once told his son in the early days within hearing of half a pub. Bristow leaned towards the board and popped in another dart.

As we have seen, from the age of nine Bristow had both a five-foot snooker table and a dartboard at home as a shift in the often-changing household created a little more For a while he played both games against George but the snooker petered out. The snooker matches were not sufficiently momentous for either father or son to remember who won. Darts took over as Bristow began thousands of hours of practice. If there was something unappealing on television — a love story or some soap opera — Pam would be left to watch it on her own. She would be expected to arrive with a plate heaped with sandwiches from time to time as the darts score mounted. For Pam Bristow, the suffragettes had fought in vain.

The male Bristows would often play 1,001-up, which many darts buffs argue is the best form of all. Certainly, it is the best format for an aspiring champion to play: it enables him to get into the groove of high scoring better than the shorter 501-up, which is tailored for‘ television. And, in theory at least, the Bristow even played a million-and-one as well. They would set out on that long trail, add up their total in lots of 10,001, and eventually lose track of their score, this being before the days of calculators and home computers. Bristow maintains that he and George could, in fact, have got through a game of a million-and-one in 24 hours or so. That is unlikely, although it is I surprising how quickly these marathons go.

By the time he was 13, Bristow was becoming quite proficient at darts. He had tried football, cricket, golf, boxing, swimming and cards, plus one or two more pursuits. He could, for instance, play chess and dominoes. But it seemed as though he would be best at darts. Occasionally he could score 140 which is two darts in the small treble 20 bed, and another dart in the single 20. Very occasionally, at 12, he would score 180, which is all three darts in the treble 20 bed. In darts, they get quite excited about that.

The Crafty Cockney : the autobiography by Eric Bristow (Arrow Books 2008)

 

Streetwise

‘You play like a poof!’

These were, the words my dad George said to me when he first watched me play darts. I was eleven years old and he'd just bought me a board for my birthday. I was playing in my bedroom.

‘I can't take you down the pub if you play like that,' he said.

I’d never played darts before, but three weeks later I was getting regular three-dart scores of a hundred plus. The trouble was 1 had a unique style of throwing that in my dad's eyes looked suspect. It involved standing to the side and holding the dart lower down the barrel so my little finger rested on the tip of it. This hindered my throwing action. To overcome this I raised my little finger in the air so there was no contact with the point.

‘You look like a little posh boy holding a china teacup,’ he said.

‘Give it a rest, Dad,' I said to him. This is the way I play, and this is the way I'll always play.’

He didn’t like it, but it was a style that gave me five World Championships, five World Masters, two News of the World titles, four British Opens, three Butlins Grand Masters and numerous Open wins in Sweden, Denmark and North America, plus a host of other tides — and pretty soon everybody was copying my throwing style. As soon as I got good there were thousands of other players in pubs and clubs up and down the country all playing with raised pinkies. They thought they could be great darts players just by lifting up their little finger. What a bunch of wallies!

Bobby Dazzler: My Story by Bobby George (Orion 2006)

Yes, he could be arrogant at times, both on and off the oche, but I think he needed that for his game. There was never any malice there. If he had something to say, he would always say it to your face and I respected him for that. He was blunt but he was also honest and I never once heard him bad mouth anyone behind their back.

In 1977, Eric and I won the pairs at the Crayford Open and almost met each other in the final of the singles. I reached the final and Eric got to die semi-finals where he lost to Peter Chapman, a darts veteran and former News of the World champion.

Peter had a big hairy chest and used to love to show it oft by playing dart with his shirt open all the way down to just above his navel. Eric was never shy in coming forward and mentioned the chest hair to Peter, asking if he grew an extra hair every time he lost a match. When Peter asked why. Eric replied. ‘Well, you’re playing my mate in the final and you've just grown another one. Look!’ He could be a saucy bastard at times.

The two of us had some great times together, particularly in the early days, winning lots of tournaments and causing havoc all over the place with our money races. We always had a laugh too. I once played Eric in St Paul’s Way, east London. I went up to the oche and hit the wire under the treble 20 three times in a row. No score. Eric was in hysterics until he got up to the oche and did exactly the same with his three darts. No score.

Six darts hit six wires. It was incredible. I have never seen or heard of anything like that before or since. Some drunk in the crowd heckled us and told us we were rubbish. Quick as a flash. Eric went over, offered him his darts and said, ‘Go on then, you do it. Hit the wire three times.’ It was a priceless moment.

At that time, money races were the only way to earn good money from darts, and if you were a decent player, this was normally easy money, too. Eric and I were normally so confident that we carried little cash on us because normally we won. I say, normally.

One night I drove Eric to the Mother Hubbard pub in Loughton, where he took on Bob Wood in a money race for £200, which was a great deal of money back then. He lost. Eric came up to me at the bar and asked me to lend him the money to cover his debt, but I had nothing like that amount of cash on me. We were both flummoxed for a moment, until Eric went over to Bob and offered him a game of ’double or quits’ against me! Suddenly, I was the one in the firing line. If I won, we were in the clear and if I lost, we somehow had to find £400.

The match was played over seven legs of 1001 and at one stage I was in serious trouble against him. With little money in our pockets. Eric and I were about to get lynched by the locals, and we were outnumbered by about 30 to one. At the end of one leg, I walked over to Eric and handed him the keys to my Ford Cortina, parked outside. I told him that if I looked like losing, he had to get outside, start up the engine and leave the passenger door open for me. In the worst-case scenario, we would have to make a run for it. We would have no other choice. The money race would probably turn into a car chase.

I went back to the oche and no sooner had I played my first three darts of the next leg when Eric shouted out with the keys in his hand, ‘Bob, I can’t drive.’ I couldn’t believe it. Talk about waking me up! Our only chance now was for me to win the match. I pulled out several maximums and nicked it on the final leg. I was wet through with sweat at the end, and that was just to cancel out a bet that Eric lost. We left the pub without a penny between us, and never went back.

That was our apprenticeship but there is no doubt that such experiences improved our darts. My game was improving all the time. The cheques and the trophies were proof of that.

Eric and I became the game's version of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and we stuck up for each other through thick and thin. I will never forget that about him. Most of the others just looked after themselves but he wasn't like that.

Heartlands (2002)

Bellies and Bullseyes: The Outrageous True Story of Darts by Sid Waddell (Ebury Press 2007)

In mid-February I went up to Newcastle from my home in Leeds for the England/Scotland clash. I attended the pre-match banquet and had a drink with some of the players before the meal. Alan Glazier, a star exhibition player like Evans, was courteous and shy. Tony Brown, also of England, looked like Desperate Dan and was drinking gin fast. Charlie Ellix, a small Cockney, also seemed to have a mighty thirst. Across the way, nineteen-year-old Eric Bristow toyed with a pint of lager. Later he told me that the Indoor League had inspired him. ‘When I was sixteen me dad was teaching me darts and I used to sit on the settee watching Indoor League. I said to me mum and dad “I want to go on that”.’ He did, and he won it.

Next day the action and atmosphere at the City Hall lived up to expectation. The last time I’d been there was to see PJ Proby, and the support was a band called Nero and the Gladiators. The darts was gladiatorial and the Geordie crowd loved every minute. Two images live in my memory. Firstly, Bristow saluting the crowd after a 16-dart leg and going on to win. Secondly, a stocky mop-headed little bloke from Kirkcaldy who bounced around the stage in tartan trews and did a number on Charlie Ellix. He was described in the programme as ‘Jocky’ Wilson – ‘one of the unemployed’.