Eeninall. I know there's a debate about whether darts is a sport, but JEEZ Phil Taylor...

Anyone see last night's semis and final?

I'll do a quick review for anyone interested.

Firstly and most importantly (hee hee) the walk-on girls: two blondes, one was a stunnah!! and the other was quite magnificently bosomed. Neither looked like filth, though, sadly, not like the one I raved about on here a couple of years ago. Dear me indeed.

Anyway: so I missed the first semi but evidently James Wade (who has put on a ton of weight and now looks like a darts player) had thrown a familiar eppy and sulked throughout his 10-1 defeat, repeatedly asking the match ref if he could default 'cos he didden wanna play any more (sniff). That's kind of what they all implied, anyway, didn't see it so can't confirm anything but the score.

Second semi was a cracker: Adrian Lewis and Raymond van Barneveld got to 9-9, each outdoing the other with huuuuge checkouts and the crowd going crazy ape bats**t between throws. Each had a stupidly high average: Barney had the advantage in the final leg, and with a huge checkout to win, landed the first two and then bent the wire with his last; Lewis, with a similarly high three dart checkout to snatch victory, hit all three and amid huge adulation, went through to the final.

And now to the point of my bothering to post this.

I accept the point of view of anyone who says that if you can play it in flipflops it ain't a sport. Yes, that's fair when it's a game between you and me (assuming you're crap like I am) but when the top pros are playing I believe it's a different matter. So many times down the years I've seen players slaughter everyone in the qualifying rounds and then just crumble like biccies when they play Taylor. Young, old, cocky, experienced, quiet, angry, whatever: one look at taylor and they can't hit anything.

lewis fared rather better than many, playing impressively considering he was visibly flu-ridden, shaking and mouth-breathing. He began the final exactly as he'd finished his semi: in the first five legs his average was somewhere around 108 to 113, can't recall exactly. And after those five legs the score was Lewis 0, Taylor 5.

After that, he kind of mentally wilted and eventually lost 10-1. In the interview afterwards, taylor admitted that he knew he had an advantage because Lewis wasn't well, and, as darts is his profession, he "used a few of the tricks of the trade" to grind down his opponent. Well, aside from throwing fast or slow or saying some pointed things at the drinks table, I don't know what those tricks might be. i think the main trick might be having thrashed a couple of decades worth of hopefuls.

The man is uncanny. I'm still not convinced you can call darts a sport but I have to say it's provided me with more moments of disbelief than many true sports have, and at the very top it does require a level of mental strength on a par with anything short of a major world final. Fantastic stuff. Taylor is amazing, remarkable. A one-off.

Posted By: Sugbad The Bad on November 4th 2013 at 20:12:19

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