The new "darts" shirt

Click image to enlarge

Whoa - my new shirt from Toffs arrived on Friday, and I think it may use it for next season's games.

It's a Middlesbrough "Away" shirt from the 1970's in thick cotton, and it's really comfortable to play in.

Note how the lighting set-up has been altered to be dog proof. If he'd have chewed the other side of the mid cable off switch Bracken would be in dog heaven now, so lesson learnt. Hey, he wouldn't do it again, would he :o)

League Placings, 2007/8

As suspected, we dropped to 6th position on the last day of the season, but we're still really pleased to appear well up in the top half of the table.

Congratulations to The Cricketers on their title, and they'll be collecting their trophy on Presentation Night, Delves Club, 08/07/2008.

On the table of leading Individual Singles players the Chelmsford's Peter McLean and myself both made it onto the leader board, in 13th and joint 15th position respectively. It was quite a buzz for me to see my name on that list of the top 24 players for the season. Peter would've been even higher if he'd been able to play more games.

180's Scored, 2007/8 Season

Congratulations to Alan Parkin for achieving joint fourth in the 180's table. This blog was useful to Alan in tracing one of his “lost” (unrecorded) 180's. By using the SEARCH BLOG option at top left we were able to find the details of all three of his maximums. One of these had not been recorded on the post-match game card, and we were able to rectify this.

Interestingly Phil Borthwick notched only a single 180. He went through the season undefeated to top the Individual Placings with 28 wins from 28 games, and he also won the Singles cup. This seems to be a prime example of “180's for show, Doubles for dough”, but I'd still have loved to get my name on the 180's list, and well done to Alan for being our only representative.

Finals Night 2007/08

Picture from Roger's mobile phone

Our League's “Finals Night” was held at Leadgate Cricket Club on Tuesday night.

The Chelmsford's only representative was Jimmy, who lost in the dominoes final to Joe of The Commercial.

The darts were of a really high standard. The big hitters in the league contested the Singles and Doubles semi finals and finals, with the action relayed on big screen. Here are some brief notes on the way it went :

Doubles 1st semi : Neville and Stevie beat Stu and Gary. S&G did well to pull back from a 2-0 deficit before Neville sank the D9 to make it 3-2 in a close game.

Doubles 2nd semi : Tim and Davey were in top form to overcome Graham and Phil 3-0 (18 darts, 14 darts, and 19 darts gave them an overall average of 88 per throw including the finishing).

Singles 1st semi : Phil beat Davey in a game where he was twice trailing, but got to grips with the darts he'd had to borrow due to an earlier emergency to take it 3-2. Most of the legs were 17 darters, with a 15 darter at the beginning.

Singles 2nd semi : Stevie had a bye due to his opponent being unavailable.

Doubles final : Tim and Davey were in great form and were righting any lax shots with 140's. They beat Neville and Stevie 3-0, with Davey taking out 25 (S9, D8) to clinch it.

Singles final : Phil was a very popular winner to beat Stevie in the final. Stevie has been a champion in earlier seasons and looked gutted to lose both the Doubles and Finals, but Phil had been getting stronger as the games went on and had totally found the T20 by the time he played the final.

Bob's 27

Bob's 27 is a great little practice routine I've been using for the last few weeks. It was devised by Bob Anderson and concentrates on Doubles accuracy.

You can keep a note of the running score on paper, in your head, or if you have a laptop handy DartPro handles it nicely with it's usual stats and graphs to help you identify the doubles you have the most trouble with.

You start off with 27 points and go round the board throwing three darts at each double from 1 to 20 in sequence, finishing on the Bull if you prefer. Every double you hit earns you the double's score and is added to your total, but missing a double with all three darts means you must subtract a single double from the total. Once you're down to zero or less the game is over.

I've only ever been right to the end of the game once, but for me it's a good bit of practice on the lower value doubles. That shot on D7 (pictured) is my best ever shot in Bob's 27 - I've not managed three in a given double before or since.

Tommys Darts

I get a lot of visits to this blog from people Googling the term "tommys darts". I've always praised them for their good customer service, and this week has been no exception.

They delivered the wrong flights, but immediately posted replacements when I queried it with them on their Pure Darts site.

I'd asked for the R4X flights (left), but they accidently sent the Amazon ones (right). I'm sure the Amazon range is for female players, so I didn't want to be seen using them after that business with the light purple (allegedly pink) flights from last year :o)

Incidentally, I've proven the Ruthless claim of them being 33% thicker than ordinary flights by clumping 18 of each type together and measuring the width. The results were 8.25mm for the R4X against the 6mm of ordinary flights. No wonder they are so durable.

No reason for this post . . .

. . . I just wanted to brighten things up a bit.

Don't be fooled by the curls - she can hit a 123 under pressure :o)

138 Finish

I don't get many big finishes, and this 138 is definitely the best I've hit for months. I was playing 501 legs on DartPro, and the first dart was perfectly in the T20.

This left 78, and I prefer 18's on this as hitting the single leaves 60, for a prospective D20 finish next time round.

Luckily the T18 just crept in, and instead of my usual trick of fluffing it on the 3rd dart I hit the D12 fairly centrally.

Season Review 2007 / 8

The Good

The opening 1001X team game: We always seemed to fare badly in the first match of a League meeting, but this season we notched a respectable 57.69% success rate. It was even in the 80's at one point, but we couldn't maintain it.

The Doubles games: I don't hold the percentages for team members, but I know that my success rate in the Doubles games this season was an improved 53.85%. I always feel the pressure in Doubles games as I don't want to let my partner down, so I'm relieved to have won more than we lost.

The Singles games. I've smashed my existing record, and this season's win rate will be my new standard to aim for in future seasons. The number's not important for the blog, as it just heaps the pressure on me – a good tip learned from Graham of The Derwentside last season.

Paul : Our new player for the first half of the season made a great impression and did really well. It's a pity that he wasn't available for the second half of the season, but I hope he can play for us at some point in the future.

The Bad

No 180's for me in League games this season, and very few close misses either. I know I'm unlikely to ever win the 180 trophy, but in previous seasons it was good to at least see my name on “the list”.

Travel : I really miss the team coach we had last season. Getting into as many as three taxis is just not the same. There are signs this may be resolved for next season.

Pressure : The nerves were there for me this season. I've had to wave goodbye to the care free days of my first season. I'm now well aware of the high standard around me and the need to just get on with my own game rather than worry about how good the other players are.

The Ugly

My game against Dave Crawley of Delves Club towards the end of the season. I had well more than 200 points remaining as he sunk the winning double – and I threw first! It was an absolute horror show from me, and I usually at least raise my game when I'm up against the leading players.

Chelmsford 2 - 8 Chopwell

The Chelmsford

Too little too late in the race for 5th spot I think, but I'll check for news from Jay (Wheatsheaf) after their game with The Turf. Strangely we played better than last week but didn't collect the points.

I had an awful Team game (40 average on the optimistic side), but cranked it up to win my Doubles game with Peter. I cranked it up even further in my Singles game but couldn't overcome Norman's two 140 shots with him throwing first. If he'd missed his winning double I'd have been looking at 34, so I certainly didn't bottle it.

Peter won his Singles game to get our other point, but there were near misses galore for us on a night where we played the game properly, but were just short of that finishing touch in hitting the doubles.

A fitting end to the season with us competing and making our opponents win the points rather than giving them away, and despite falling back to 6th or 7th in the League I really feel we showed ourselves to be a proper team this season. I should be a spin doctor or something :o)

All good things . . .

The 2007/8 season ends tomorrow night when we sign off with a home game against Chopwell Central. Regardless of the result this has been a great season for us – the best in my three years with The Chelmsford, and I'd like to think we've raised the bar for future seasons.

During the close season I'll continue with the practice and trips up to The Derwentside to see if anyone is playing up there on a Friday night, and I'll also post a few reviews of what went well / badly for us this year. In the meantime I'll get some practice in for tomorrow night, and we'll be doing all we can to hold on to 5^th position in the League.

Chopwell Central 6 - 4 Chelmsford

Practice darts / Alan

This was about the best result we could have hoped for against Chopwell, as they play to a very high standard. They scored a 180, with several near misses on further ones.

We almost had the chance to win the team game, and I would have been looking at 98 if Chris had missed their finish. The average throw from them including the finish was only 55.6, but they got back to their usual form in the following games.

I was pleased with my own game after a poor week on the practice board, but these 4 points may not be enough to allow us to hold on to 5th place; we are now just 3 points ahead of The Wheatsheaf, and if they can repeat their 9-1 scoreline from Tuesday night we'll find it very hard to get the points we need next week.