The Blackhill Cricketers Darts Team

Photo from the Blackhill Cricketers site

The Blackhill Cricketers Darts Team now have an online presence at Blackhill Darts. There are a few sections under construction, but it's a great idea to have a team site and I'll check it for updates throughout the season.

They're certainly piling the points on in the League.

Singles Cup night -- Coach & Horses

We had a strangely low key and quiet night up at the Coach & Horses, Leadgate tonight. I endured the best and worst of my own game to scrape through to the last 16 for the first time. At one point I had the dreaded 1-0 lead and throwing really well against the darts to clinch it, but my finishing deserted me and it had to go to the wire in the 3rd leg.

I was a bit disappointed to get all of the poor mental game that I've done so much to remove from my League games come back on Cup night, but I did just enough to make it through to the second round where the heat will really be on and we can see those problems properly magnified :o)

Chelmsford 6 - 4 The Turf

Pictured : On my wish list - the John Part Unicorn "Hero Golden" 95%

Most of the players from both teams "upped" their games from last week, and this resulted in a very close match where all of games went right to the wire. The Turf brought good support with them which made for a great atmosphere.

Sadly for us our newest player Kris has switched job and wasn't there. He's now working up at Slaley Hall and is unlikely to make many more appearances for us. On the other hand our old stalwart Chris picked up the darts for his first game during my time with the team, and he played a very strong game despite losing his Singles game.

I personally had a few problems score building, but my finishing was good. I never seem to get both aspects together these days.

A very enjoyable evening and I'll be watching for The Turf in the League, as I think they'll pick up a lot of points and do well this season.

The Turf 3 - 7 Chelmsford

A good result for our team, and I had to console myself with a "team" performance, getting the winning doubles in the opening Team game and my Doubles game with Roger, but losing in my Singles game. Too many of my first darts were straying into the 5's.

Peter and Alan were our most consistent players on a night where we never felt comfortable or settled. The Turf's board is Unicorn Eclipse like my practice board (excellent, and needless to say there were no bounce outs on the night), but it is the stark lighting which takes some getting used to.

After my long walk home from The Turf last season I made sure I was first on the team bus :o)

The Blackhill Ward Knock Out, 1st Round

We had a break from the League last night and played Stanley Masons at home in the The Blackhill Ward Knock Out, 1st Round.

The format is a mix of darts and dominoes. The darts consist of three team games of 1001 DSDF, and although we got the right result with a 2-1 win in the darts none of us really settled and played well. In one game both teams struggled to even get a steady 60.

The other two legs were OK though and I was pleased to get the D9 finish in the opening game.

The dominoes result went the right way too, and we've progressed into the next round which will be played on the 16th December 2008.

Chelmsford 4 - 6 Coach & Horses

A neat practice shot. They landed in the board from left to right.

C&H played a much better game than last week, yet we were still able to score 4 points to take the total to a reasonable 25 from 4 games. After going 0-3 down with C&H showing impressive form it was a relief to get something out of the game, and C&H only secured the win in the final leg of the night.

Performance of the night has to go to C&H's Billy who hit the winning finished in his Team, Doubles, and Singles games. Every time he was looking at a double he hit it.

C&H's Ian scored a 180 and immediately followed it with a 123 which was millimetres away from being a consecutive maximum.

Alan P from our team finished from 66 in impressive manner; after bouncing out on the T10 with his first dart he then succeeded with the 2 dart out shot of S16, Bull.

I was fairly happy with my own game overall, but like the rest of our team I was a bit of a slow starter.

Coach & Horses 6 - 4 Chelmsford

Unicorn Hero 95% T/A, 27g

We got off to a bad start last night, trailing by 300 points in the opening 1001X Team Game and allowing C&H the luxury of a leisurely point.

From this point though C&H seemed to ease off and a couple of them didn't play to their usual standards. This allowed us into the game and we managed to pick up 4 points and even feel we could have had more.

Kris and Alan P both hit a string of high scoring shots in their Singles games, and I was pleased with my own game. I think practising less is making me feel a bit more relaxed on match nights, and I'll post about this soon.

Chelmsford 8 - 2 Castleside

Good vertical accuracy on a practice board 180

Castleside made some minor changes to their team from last week, and most of the games were close despite the score. I found from my chats with them last week that many of them don't play that often. This always rings the alarm bells for me and I went to great lengths to stay focused and take nothing for granted. The points they won in the Singles game against our rising player Kris and the Doubles game with our senior player Peter demonstrates this point.

The performance of the evening went to one of their players from Wigan who is currently contract working up here. He hit the highest finish of the night by taking out a 91 finish against Kris in a Singles game with an unconventional but effective T20 / S11 / D10.

Castleside also had an older player who hit the bull on most of his shots in the Singles game. This was helping him to score build very well, and I think the surprising number of bulls was rattling his opponent, Mark H. The game was tight to the end, with Mark very relieved to hit the winning double.

I was pleased to get a good string of steady 60's as well as some high scoring shots. Steady 60's are the holy grail for me. I'm sick of having to try to rescue 45's and 26's with 80+ shots.

Tommys Darts news

I've just received an e-mailed newsletter from Pure Darts, the on-line presence for Tommy's Darts. There are a few new products worth a mention:

They now print personalised text on flights using the hot foil process. They have been doing something similar for quite a while, but this time you can choose the type of flight the message is printed on, and importantly you can opt for the strong R4X flights. I've had flights printed in the past, but until now they used the ordinary flights which are not as durable as the R4Xs.

New to their products are football flights, football stems, UK County emblem flights, and some new international flights.

The Deflectagrip Nylon Stems I use are now at a rock bottom price of just 13p per set, and they're doing a range of 95% Tungsten alloy darts at just £12.99 per set. There's not much choice in the 27g weight I prefer, but the other weights seem well represented. Take a look at their site - the range is huge.

Castleside 1 - 9 Chelmsford

Practice darts

Our opening game of the season went well with a victory against some new faces in the Castleside team. Castleside were capable of getting more points from this game, but we finished well in most of the games to minimise their chances.

We fielded our new player Chris, and he did well in his first League game. He's only just bought his own set of darts and started practicing but he fitted in well and won a Singles point.

My practice on the lower doubles during the week paid off as I finished a D19 quite well, but I struggled to get a good first dart into the 20 on a few occasions, often trying to rescue shots by covering on 19's.

Elsewhere on the night The Wheatsheaf beat The Turf 9-1 away.

Our 2008/9 season starts tomorrow night

The Unicorn Hero 95% 27grms

I've just being doing some very light practice in the last two weeks. Typically I'll play a game of Bob's 27, three games of 301 DS/DF, and three games of 501 straight in.

DartPro is really very useful in recording my progress in these three formats, and when playing the 301 & 501 games I class it as a defeat if my average for the leg is less than the prevailing 3-year average which I've built up over the years on DartPro. This adds a bit of pressure on the finishing shots, as slack finishing ruins the three dart average for the leg.

One slight difference to my grip has come about while trying to improve accuracy on the low doubles such as D3. I noticed I got better results by holding the dart nearer the tip, and in tightening up on the low doubles this grip seems to do well on the mid and high targets too.

Oh Happy Day

I think the hat was meant to be a tennis stick cover

Surely all of us dart players know what it feels like to be beaten by someone who picks the darts up for the first time and just play the game for a laugh. It hurts. They never play you again, or anyone else for that matter, so you don't get the chance to exact any sort of pathetic revenge.

So imagine my glee to beat Deborah at tennis whilst on Holiday. She used to practice and everything. She thinks she's dead good. I beat her on pure serve and volley 6 love. To top it all I've laid the old tennis bat down and I won't give her a chance to, erm, exact any sort of pathetic revenge :o)

League season opens next Tuesday

We had some great news at our informal practice night tonight as the fixtures were pinned up on the board ; as it stands all of last season's teams are still present with the addition of The Moorcock, so we'll have 16 teams.

The Moorcock is a typical old fashioned pub up on the moors and they have a very strong team. We had a great couple of Friendly games against them in October 2005 so I'm really pleased they have joined our league. We play them in December and I'm looking forward to it.

We open our season against The Castleside next Tuesday.

League News

Pictured : A practice shot on Doubles

I don't have any firm news to confirm from the recent League meeting, but at this stage it seems there will be at least as many teams competing in 2008/9 as last season.

This is good news, as I suspected one or two might drop out. One still may drop out, but we definately have a new addition. As soon as I have the starting 15 / 16 I'll publish the teams here.

Chelmsford 5 - 5 Wheatsheaf (2nd leg, Friendly)

Our team were missing three people from last week's game and we only just managed to field 6 players. A large party arrived from The Weatsheaf though, and we had a good night.

As with the previous week we made a really strong start and raced to a 3-0 lead before Wheatsheaf pulled it back and made it 5-5 in the final Singles game of the evening.

This will probably be our last game before the season starts in September, so it was good to put in a decent performance with a team line-up which could be fairly close to the team we'll be fielding next season.

New board, and a new personal 501 record

I've had the Unicorn Ecipse dart board for a few days now, and I now have a new personal best to break it in with - a 13 darter in a 501 game, which is an average of 115.62 per throw. The scores were 140, 140, 100, 81, and a D20 with the first dart. This is by far the best leg I've ever played. The other legs I played tonight were rubbish, but these brief highlights give me encouragement.

There have been no bounce outs whatsoever from the Unicorn Eclipse yet. The wiring is superb, and it is a huge improvement over the Winmau Blade III I've been using since August 2005. There are design problems with the Blade series which cause the wires to become raised from the board, and the treble wires can become flattened in a strange spider's web pattern.

One Week Trial - Titanium Stems

My trial of the Harrows "Silver" Short Titanium stems didn't go too well. They were too short for me, so I'll have to try the Medium ones to give them a proper airing. The short length caused inbalance on my 27g 5cm darts, so as mentioned I'll need the longer version to get a fair result.

Until then there are just a couple of observations ; some of the stems I received were not perfectly machined and did not spin "true" in the hand, so for every couple of packets you may need to bin the odd one. Also, the thread on the stem to attach the flight holder was incredibly fine and I'd prefer a chunky thread. I just didn't have confidence that these replacement tops would survive any sort of serious punishment with such a fine thread.

One very surprising positive is that you get a nice reflection on the dome part of the stem which acts as a strong guide for subsequent throws. I find this really helpful, as it allows you to concentrate on the throw and block out distractions. No other stem I've tried gives this type of reflection.

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.