4th Americas Cup Pictures

Thanks to Rosemarie Duff for sending me some photos of the Americas Cup.

Pictured are Kim Whaley-Hilts (Womens title winner from Canada), the victorious USA team, and the Trinidad & Tobago team (red shirts) and Cayman team (white shirts).

Wheatsheaf 6 - 7 Chelmsford (1st leg, Friendly)

We got off to a great start against Wheatsheaf up in Leadgate last night, but we couldn't maintain the pace and they pulled the scroreline back to a more realistic looking single point victory for us.


I thought we played well against a team with so many strong players, and as expected following our battle for 5th place last season which Wheatsheaf eventually won nothing will be decided until next Tusdays return match.

We had a slightly different format on the night : Two teams of 8 players (a good turn out) played 1 1001X Team Game, 4 Doubles games, and finally 8 Singles games.

Great hospitatlity was provided by the managgement, and thanks to Jay and Lena for arranging these games.

Americas Cup results from Rosemarie Duff

The 4TH America’s Cup in Darts took place at the Cascadia Hotel this weekend beginning a on Friday 25th and ending yesterday, Sunday 27th July. Eleven teams participated ranging from Canada to Brazil.

Once again the Caribbean teams were unable to take the Americas Cup from the Americans as they won for the fourth consecutive time ousting Canada in the finals on Sunday.

Kim Whaley- Hilts of Canada took the Ladies Title winning over Maureen Shepherd of Barbados. In the Men’s category, Gary Mawson of USA beat Canadian, Jerry Hull to take his place as top male player of the event. Mawson also won the award for the most 180’s scoring an impressive 17 in the Tournament.

While the T&T team played extremely well in the first round, qualifying at the top of their group after beating Barbados, Cayman Islands, Guyana and St. Lucia, they were edged out by Jamaica in the knockout quarter finals. However, the local team hopes to successfully defend their Caribbean Team Title in the next event.

The main competition, the 17th Caribbean Darts Championships, will begin on Monday 28th at 5pm. with the opening ceremony and parade of teams, to be followed by an Open Luck of the Draw Doubles. Team games will begin at 10am on Tuesday with 12 competing teams which include Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Brazil, Cayman Islands, Florida, Guyana, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, St. Lucia, Turks and Caicos and Trinidad and Tobago. The public is invited to come and support their National Team at the Cascadia. Further information on this event can be found on the darts website at www.ttdarts.com.

Completed : One Week Trial - Alloy Stems

I've completed my one week trial of Alloy Stems, and the results are positive. I didn't break or bend any of them, and after a full week of play that is quite a surprise to me following my earlier experiences with them.

My DartPro stats for the week showed an improvement of 2 percenatge points against the rolling 28 month average, and I scoreed two 180's with them - well above my usual average of less than one per month.

The problem with them loosening during play disappeared, so it seems a few good tightenings make the thread work better with the tapping within the dart.

I'm almost a convert to the Alloys, and I'll take them to tomorrow night's friendly game against the Wheatsheaf before moving on to trial the Harrows Titanium Stems later in the week.

4th Americas Cup underway

The action has started in the 4th Americas Cup being hosted by Trinidad & Tobago.

The results and fixtures appear here.

MND Benefit Evening, Derwentside 02/08/2008

The Derwentside are holding a Motor Neurone Disease
benefit evening on Saturday 2nd August to commemorate their Landlord Ken, who sadly died earlier in the year.

Tickets are £5, and the featured bands are The Toxic Pixies (pictured) and YIC/DC, which I assume is a local AC/DC tribute band ("why aye" is local dialect for "yes").

I'll be attending with some others from The Chelmsford, and I'm sure it'll be a good night. They always have good music nights up there, and of course we'll be remembering Ken and supporting the cause.

One Week Trial - Alloy Stems

This week I'm trialing the "Silver" Short Alloy 35mm stems from Pure Darts. I'm going to give them a try for a full week and see if they offer anything over the Deflectagrip Nylon Original stems I normally use.

I'll post the results next Monday, but in the meantime there are some general observations I've noted following the first session with them :

• Although labeled "Short" they are actually in between the "Short" and "Medium" lengths of the Deflectagrips. This caused my first few shots to land in the board at a steeper angle, but after a few minutes I seemed to have sub consciously adjusted and the angle of attack is now perfect.
• Those "holes" you can see in the picture allow you to put a dart point through them to tighten them up firmly. Despite this I found that they became loose a couple of times, so you'd need some Silicone "O" Rings to stop this from happening.
• They look great. I'm sure there's no silver in the alloy, and I notice they put quotes around the "Silver" description. They're probably mostly aluminium, and they look really slick. it may sound irrelevant, but it's good to have kit which looks the part.

So, I'll now give them a full week's work-out and post the results.

TTDA 25th Anniversary

Trinidad and Tobago Team Pictures

The Trinidad & Tobago Darts Association was formed 25 years ago, and to coincide with the anniversary they are to host the 4th WDF Americas Cup and the 17th Caribbean Darts Championships. Running from the 25th of July to the 3rd of August at the Cascadia Hotel and Conference Centre the competitions will involve 13 teams, including Brazil, Florida, Canada and U.S.A. with a total of approximately 200 players.

After meeting the T&T team in 2006 and 2007 I am very interested in their progress. I've been in constant touch with Nannette Brooks (T&T Ladies' No 1) over the last two years, swapping tips and advice, and generally sharing our progress in our respective leagues. Although we play at vastly different levels it's great to have someone to share darts issues with as well as just keeping in touch.

Full details of the competitions are available at the official web site including photos of all the competing players and a timetable of events, and I'll post any additional news which Rosemarie Duff sends me. I'm certain Nannette and Vivekanand Dyal (nicknamed Rabbit due to his large family!) will do very well in the Womens and Mens titles. Good luck to both of them, as well as all of the players from the other teams who were such great company in Barbados (Barbados, Guyana, Cayman Islands, and T&T themselves). I really wish I could be there this year, but I think it'll be 2009 when I can next make it.

Practice Night

None of these on Tuesday

With no league games to compete in until September and only two friendly games arranged we had a fairly low key practice night on Tuesday. It was interesting to see the same type of things as on some match nights ; really slack shots from most of us, with only Alan P being on target.

That's OK on a practice night, but not when it happens in a League game - when it matters. It's hard to learn anything from it though.

Towards the end of the night I was getting plenty of good shots in, but had it been a league game this would have been at the point in the night when the opponents had left and we would be just winding down with a few friendly games. I would also be the time when you'd hear lots of "Why didn't you do that in the game?" type comments, and if only I knew the answer . . .

Wheatsheaf Friendly Games

Now the 2007/08 season is over our Tuesday nights will just be practice games until the new season starts in early September.

To break things up a bit we have arranged two friendly games against The Wheatsheaf in Leadgate :

Tuesday 29th July : Wheatsheaf V Chelsmford

Tuesday 5th August : Chelmsford V Wheatsheaf