Sexual Equality For Darts
Players
It’s a long story, but to cut it short the
league that I have played in for over 30 years has a fairly new secretary with
whom I am not on very friendly terms, nor from what I hear is half the league.
He is, or at least was, the captain of my old team for a short while. There have
been unkind words said on both sides and it seems that my old team is being
split into two. A couple of the remaining players have asked me to rejoin them
in an attempt to make a second team up without him.
The other night I was asked to join them in
our favourite pub for a few knock about games and a chat to see if we could
raise a team. Towards the end of the evening a young lad walked in with his
mother, who I was told, were likely to sign up, as his mother already played for
the Ladies team at the pub. We were still going to be short of players, but one
of the lads said that his wife was willing to be a non playing captain, although
if really pressed she would play the odd game. Shortly after this we left the
pub and I had an evil thought that was greeted with much malicious glee.
I
said, “How about entering the new team in the Ladies league for next season to
cause a bit of trouble at his league meeting? We will have a mixed team with a
couple of Ladies in to give the suggestion some more weight and if you really
wanted to stir things up you could have a quiet word with a couple of the
captains beforehand to get them to put in their “Four-penny-worth!”
My friend commented, “There is supposed to
be no sexual discrimination now and to refuse a male team in the Ladies League
is obviously sexual discrimination. Anyway,” he added, “some Ladies have
always played in the Men’s leagues.”
I don’t know if it will happen at the
forthcoming meeting or if my friend will chicken out, but this issue is an old
chestnut that will probably never go away. The subject of men playing in the
Ladies Leagues was raised at League Meetings several times in the years that I
ran the league and was always heavily rejected by the Ladies Captains and mocked
by the Men’s Captains.
Darts is, and has always been, a very male
orientated sport, probably because of its association with beer drinking and
pubs as much as anything else. As with many sports it is trying to change it’s
image and sexual equality in the sport is slowly happening with prize money
going up for Ladies competitions, although of course it seems unlikely that a
woman will ever win a “Men’s World Title, because women are just not as good
as men at darts! Having said that, there are one or two lady 
players,
that are turning a few heads and not just because they are very young and
pretty. I do of course include Anastasia Dobromyslova, the young Russian beauty,
who at 24 years old, has recently done something that very few Lady darts
players have ever done and that is competed on a level playing field with
professional male players in a World Class Competition. She recently played in
the UK Open and qualified for “The Grand Slam Of Darts” this year where she
played World Champion John Part in her first round of the round robin heats. Of
course others such as the legendary Trina Gulliver have done it before, but I am
sorry to say that it is still very much a novelty for Ladies to enter, never
mind compete on equal terms, in a Men’s darts competition. It would be a lot
of fun to watch a pretty young girl up there on the stage beating some arrogant,
fat, beer bellied, middle aged slob at a game of 501!