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The Derwent Walk at Ebchester Station [credit]This was our worst result for a while, and we did nothing to push Delves out of first gear. It's very disappointing when you don't push the opposition and let them canter through the game. In most of the 10 games we weren't even near a finish.
At least we avoided a whitewash, and I finished on the 68 (S20, S16, D16) that Alan P left for me in our Doubles game.
I put last year's nightmare game against Davey Crawley behind me and played a reasonably steady singles game against the throw, but had 88 on the board as my opponent sunk his double. I reall enjoyed it though and wanted to keep on throwing, so at least the mental game was right.
The return leg is in a fortnight's time due to the Doubles Cup next Tuesday, and it'll be a chance to show we can compete to a higher level than in this game.
Many thanks to Steven Dawson of Blackhill Club for arranging a great night out at the Metro Arena Newcastle for the PDC Premier League darts.
I've been to a few events before, but this was by far the largest and the most polished. The atmosphere was great and I'd love to do this again next year.
Its not a cheap night out when you're drinking greedy sized 2 pint cups of Arena priced beer, but worth every penny - and the sore head!
We lost the opening 1001X Team Game due to some poor finishing after building up a small lead, but from that point the games swung between the two teams quite evenly.
Peter Mc played the game of the night, getting down to a D1 finish in 15 darts and then taking it out with the last dart of his next throw. Alan Brunskill from their team again played a good game and won his Singles match.
I used my newer set of Unicorn Hero 27's in the game after taking both sets out with me to try. I think I'll stick with these ones now as they threw quite well for me.
The dates are out for the 2009 Barbados Darts Festival, and as you can see from the picture John Lowe is not hosting it this year. I'm sure Wayne Mardle will do a great job, but I'll really miss John and Karen.
The 10 days quoted include all of the touring party activities and tournaments, but the serious participants from USA / Canada / Caribbean / Guyana etc usually only participate in the final four days for the major tournaments. I have a brief PDF format flyer which I can forward to anyone who'd like to see it : my e-mail address is simon dot d dot thomas at gmx dot com.
The package prices start from £770 per person sharing, but if you prefer to book it all yourself just make sure your hotel is in the St Lawrence Gap district. My initial rough calculations show that for just a little more money you could have a full 14 days and stay in better accommodation if you book it privately. Plus, the official party only fly from Gatwick which is a real pain for me.
We normally don't fare to well up at LCC, but we were good value for our 7 points last night. However, just a little hesitation on some of the finishes will leave both teams thinking they could have scored more points.
The good news is that we're back on track in the opening 1001X Team game to bring our poor stats in this event back to a more reasonable 56% success rate.
Some highlights were Kris' bull finish, great score building from Alan P and Roger, and a fantastic finish from their veteran player Alan where the final 2 darts of the throw got the required 76 with T12, D18.
I had picked up my practice darts by mistake, but they threw OK for me. They just need a few more months of use to get the grip right. They're still a bit grippy, but a bit more wear will improve them. I was happy with my own game but it was well short of what I'll need next week in the last 16 of the Singles Cup.
Table courtesy of Blackhill DartsI 've just seen the draw for the last 16 of the Singles Cup posted on Blackhill Darts.
Its more than a little daunting to be on the same list as these players (notice how they represent only the top few teams), and I'll really have to up my game to avoid taking a bashing.
The practice starts now - it's only twelve days away. All of this practice on Doubles could be of little use if I don't get anywhere near a finish!
It was a surprising result last night. I practice with the Derwentside team in the close season and I know how good they all are, but it just didn't happen for them on Tuesday night. The opening Team Game was tight, and winning that got us off to a good start which we maintained.
These were good points to pick up after the disasters against Shotley Club. Willie R covered for the unavailable Roger and continued his good form whenever called upon.
Here's a decent doubles practice routine I've been using for the last few months. It has a couple of advantages over Bob's 27 in my opinion ; the doubles have to be hit as they would in a match with near misses causing a switch to another finish, and also it doesn't require any chalking.
You have two throws of three darts at each target. The target is actually the finishing score rather than just the double itself, so for example splitting the 20's sees you switching to 10's then 5's etc. This gets you nicely around the whole board, needing single segments and other doubles as you play through the game.
Hitting a target with the 1st or 2nd dart gives you a free throw at the next target which doesn't count as one of your two throws if you miss.
I like to use all three darts when practicing, so totally messing up a target and busting can be rescued by hitting a 50 Bull, giving you all three darts again.
Take the targets in any order, but I find top, bottom, left, right, the diagonals works well. It's game over if you fail to hit a target within the two throws, so it's back to the 20's for the order I take them in. The game is completed successfully when you hit the final target within the two throws.
[Picture credit]Tuesday's games were all called off on Monday evening due to the poor weather conditions. We had a practice night instead, and it went well.
I'm not sure what'll happen this Tuesday as the conditions are nearly as bad at the moment, with more snow forecast for Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday.
River Derwent, Ebchester [credit]This was a very comprehensive and disappointing defeat for us, but we actually played a better game than in the Away leg last week. SC raised their game too though, and they were on great form.
We actually won the opening team game with Alan P finishing on 70 with his last two darts (T20, D5). From that point onwards though we didn't win another game until Willie R continued his run of great performances to snatch a Singles point. Any neutral would say the overall result was correct though.
I was a bit stunned by the emphatic nature of the defeat, but I can honestly say I played above my normal standard. This was just a reminder that there are some very strong teams in this League, and when you get a chance to take points (i.e. against them in last week's game) you've got to take them.
Footnote : We had a team practice night last night to try and get us back on the right track. 501 legs and "Golf" like we used to play a couple of years ago. Maybe my "no practice" approach only works when things are going well, and I'll hit the practice board tonight.
River Derwent, Shotley BridgeThe break last week doesn't seem to have helped our game and we made a really poor start againstShotley Club last night. Losing the opening Team game and the first two Doubles game saw us 3-0 down and not looking steady at all.
Thankfully we pulled a few games back to make it look a reasonably close scoreline, but this was definitely our worst team performance of the season.
On a positive note there'll be times when we play better than that but win fewer points, so perhaps we made the best of a bad night.
Despite the same scoreline as the away leg a fortnight ago Moorcock were in much better form and pushed us all the way for the points. We lost the opening Team game with some really disappointing shots spread amongst our team. This allowed doubt to set in, whilst our opponents really warmed to the game.
Simon from their team was probably the steadiest player of the night. Special mention must go to their youngest player, who showed good focus to win the last point of the night and prevent a 7-3 defeat which would have been somewhat false.
Willie played a great Singles game for us to win the the only impressive point of the evening for us. We have a break next week to take part in the Doubles Dominoes competition. I'm not too bothered about Doms, but I still want to see us go as far as we can in all competitions this year.
Now I've had the chance to use my recovered darts alongside the replacements I can see a couple of differences between them. You can see in the picture the new gold ones have a slightly longer grip area and the the part where the point joins the barrel is slightly less bulbous. The new ones are exactly 27.0 grammes as opposed to 26.9 (they are laser etched with their weights to 0.1g precision).
These differences cause no problems at all, but the grip on the new ones is far more effective, and this is causing a worse release and my darts are veering to the left. I think this will decrease as they take a bit more damage and become smoother, but in the meantime I'll use the old ones for matches and the new ones for practice. Overcoming the poor release on the new ones seems to help overall technique when using the match darts, so I think this arrangement will work well.
Now I have tried these in both the Latinum and plain finishes I can see the benefit of Latinum. Maybe it is best to get them in this smoother finish and then roughen them up with the blade of a metal file if required. The pattern on the plain finish is extremely grippy.
I don't think too many of us settled into our games tonight as we saw several good leads wasted. On any other night I think we'd have scored a few more points but we just seemed determined to make a close game of it.
What a great location up at The Moorcock though. It feels like it should be aother County as you drive West past Castleside and out onto the moors.
Many thanks to Paul for finding my darts and passing them on.
Losing them was easy enough; being stupid enough to take them out with the dog for a walk in a coat that doesn't have decent pockets, but getting them returned was a harder journey. Someone found them and left them in a prominent position on a fence. Paul spotted them and left them thinking that the owner would find them easier if he left them where they were. Then he remembered the blog and matched the "lost" story. By this time they'd fallen off the fence and were in a field.
Many thanks to him for digging them out and letting me know. A huge relief, and I'm getting my 26's with the haymakers now :o)
Unicorn Golden Hero 95% 27g
I lost my regular set of darts last week. Maybe they'll turn up somewhere, but in the meantime I have been using the excellent Harrows Magnum 27g's. They're the best set I've ever owned (courtesy of Les allowing me to swap with him when we were given a free set each in Barbados), but sometimes they can be "twitchy" ; my tons become 140's with them, but the 45's become 26's if that makes any sort of sense.
I bet if I stuck in with them they'd be "the ones", but they're no longer available in 27g and I don't want to become dependant upon a dart which is no longer manufactured.
I've therefore ordered direct replacements for the Unicorn Hero 27g's from Pure Darts, and I've opted for the titanium finish pictured. When they arrive I'll need to file the points down to 2.5cm, so while I do that I may need to call upon the Magnums again for next week's game.
Tonight we played the Team Cup Competition where dominoes wins are just as important as darts wins. Basically it's a Team game of 1001 DSDF darts followed by a Singles game of dominoes, with the games swinging between the two disciplines until a winner is found.
We had no problems in the darts at all, but the dominoes were causing concern. Thankfully Roger hit the winning double for us in the final game of the night, but it was Willie who lead the way for us, sinking a D1 in one of the darts games and then winning his dominoes game.
Its a strange format, but this puts us into the final four. I was happy enough with my own game, but you don't get that many shots at the board in this format so it was hard to get into any sort of true rhythm.
Picture from last week's Away game
We carried a bit of good luck in last night's game, with several wayward shots finding their way into D20 and T12 etc. Mark H even scored a lucky ton with two unintentional D20s. Apart from that he played a strong game though, leading the way in the Team Game and carrying me in our doubles game.
Dawn from their team will be sick of the sight of me after four games against me in three weeks in Singles, Doubles, and Cup. There were many similarities to last week's game.
We're still quite low in the league table, but these 14 points in the last fortnight should see us moving in the right direction.
I mentioned in the previous post I avoid finishes that can "bust" if the first dart is wayward, but I noticed Bobby George took this to a higher level while commenting on the World Masters Darts today.
For a 72 finish he avoids my favoured T12 route as if you're left with 60 after the first dart you can bust it while aiming for a S20 to leave D20. It's a fair point, especially after seeing this happen on the stage today.
So I've had a bit of a rethink about a finish which was previously a reflex. The T20 approach must also be ruled out, as with 52 remaining you'd have the same problem on the S20. By illimination this just leaves the T16 route : Getting the treble leaves D12, but the single would leave 56. Again, I'd avoid S20 for the afforementioned reason and go S16 to leave D20 where an unwanted treble would still leave a nice D4.
This is hard to follow, isn't it? I bet I just go T12 next time I'm on 72 :o)
A Stanley sunset by Karen Burnip
It was a bitterly cold night last night and it was no surprised to find both our own bar and the Stanley Masons deserted apart from the participants themselves. We were at full strength apart from our non-playing captain's absence, but SM were missing one of their best players.
I've picked up a virus with all the dog walking in the early morning frost so it was just a night I wanted to get through, and I think I played a decent game under the circumstances. Hopefully It'll clear up by next Tuesday if I look after myself.
There weren't too many moments worthy of mention, but our new player Kris has developed a really steady throw and is hitting the steady S20's which are so valuable at this level.
Actually, one thing worthy of mention: I noticed one of our players tackle a 49 finish by going S17, D16. As so often happens he bust it by hitting an unwanted T17 with the first dart. I'll blog about this aspect of finishing later, as I would have tried S9, D20 to avoid that. Even an unwanted T9 would have left a nice D11 at shoulder height. We all know s**t happens, so why give it a helping hand?
The Derwent Walk at Ebchester Station [credit]
