A Good Finish To The Season

The following is taken from an article that I wrote for the Weston Darts League web-site when I was running it. It was written almost at the end of a season that had been memorable for it’s mediocrity with very few games worthy of note during the whole season.

The highest finish for the ladies usually falls somewhat short of the men’s, but J Eustice’s 106 was not much below G Cutler’s 124 which he only got a few weeks ago in an excellent 9 dart game. Last weekend I got an E-mail from Wayne Layton who was obviously very pleased with himself for hitting an 8 dart game with a 125 finish. He said that the drug test results were in and he had passed with the result sheet duly signed and witnessed by the opposition. I pointed out that I suffered delusions but not of being a good darts player and expressed my hopes that he got better soon. I also said that there was still a week to go with one last match, so his finish could in theory be beaten. Now this was obviously tempting fate because I had to send him an apology this morning for having beaten his finish in my game on Wednesday.

We had lost the match in fine style to Spittal Brook and probably the league as well when I went on with my partner. It was the last game of doubles in the last match at the very end of the season and my partner left me 130. He had got 230 to go for and hit two 20’s before hitting a treble. Foolishly I commented to my opponent, I am glad Geof got the 60 with his last dart and did not leave me the 170 because I did not fancy that. Then I went up and hit a treble 20. I stood back and looked at their score of 169 and thought, “I will play safe and not show off,” so I went for the 10 so I could follow it with 20 and leave tops for Geof’s throw next time. There was no need to show off and go 20 bull, because they could not finish on 169. How it happened I don’t know, but the second dart dropped in treble 10 and I did not even look at the board when I threw the last one in tops. Once or twice I have had high finishes before, but I know Wayne Layton will want to look at the match sheet for confirmation. We joke about having drugs tests in darts when people play well and it would be ridiculous with the amount of alcohol consumed during the average match, but it’s just as well because I know I would fail anyway because of the medication I take for my delusions including my latest one where I believe I can play darts.

P.S. Since writing the above article on Thursday I have received some more darts results and Mr Layton will be pleased to hear, my magnificent finish of 130 has been eclipsed in fine style by old timer Alf Baker of the Woolpack with a superb finish of 149. He may be getting on a bit now, but he keeps on showing us youngsters that you can't write off the “old uns.” There are only a handful of results still to come in so perhaps this will be the best this season.

P.P.S. We certainly seem to have finished the last matches of the season with a bang because believe it or not Alf's finish of 149 has been beaten by another even better score of 156 from newcomer to the league D Osbourne of the Bonnie Gem in Stone. He also had a 9 darter in that game, but as we have already had 2 X 8 darts and a brilliant 7 darter from Jimmy Richards of the Castle, I am afraid that is not good enough. In the same match at the Talbot Adge Tomkinson also got a 180. Dave Wood of the Bankhouse got a 180 in his last match against the Chase and Norman Bugler with Adam Johnson of the Castle managed a superb 16 dart doubles game of 501, so although the rest of the season had some unspectacular games the last weeks matches more than made up for it.