DART STORIES

Now here is a new page to the web site but it is one page that you the reader’s have to help out with.
 Quite simply do you have a story to tell? Perhaps it is about how you came to play darts in the first place!
 Or maybe a great game you played in or saw.
Could be that one of the legends of the game on the telly inspired you.
Or you thought he's not that good I could beat him.
Well here is your chance to tell us.

So why not share your memories here!

To start us off I will tell you how I got started playing and it was not fun believe me!
Many years ago back in the dark ages way before computers and mobile phones people used to congregate
in public house  and even then most did not have televisions! So people played darts!

But that is not where it started I was in the Royal Navy and based at H.M.S. Raleigh in Torpoint
just over the Tamar River in Plymouth.

And as a baby chef when you finished a duty watch that was working a 12 hour shift one day and doing
the morning early shift the next 4am-8am you were given a day off whoopee.
Any way there was this BIG Scouser chef who was good bit older than me and he says to me one morning
fancy a game of darts Mitch.
I replied don’t play darts.
He say’s you do now.
And here are the rules looser mark the board well I had no chance. What end to throw was my first lesson
ah so it continued with this gigantic Scouser every morning shift every fourth day there I was marking
the board for him and never winning a game.

But as time went by a lot of the guy’s and girls about my own age would meet up in the N.A.F.F.I. bar
how unusual me being in place that sells drink!
And we would play darts and guess what, all those beatings I took every fourth day were paying off!

Suddenly amongst my own crowd I rarely got beat  so all that practise was paying of, Scouse had been teaching me
 a valuable lesson! well I learnt to count and that was a huge advantage over my comrades in arms
 especially as we used to play for drinks and the odd cash wager.

When I hit the big time it was all about being asked to play for the chef’s team in a friendly against a local pub in Plymouth so excited of I trouped to the N.A.F.F. I. Shop to buy a real set of brass and feather flighted darts of my very
own in their own classy see through plastic case with bright red feathers,weight well light it said on the box!

And that was it that evening in the bar I was told I was up against a league player oh boy the nerves set in
glad they had soft loo paper in the gents as I seemed to be in there for a long time.

Well blow me down with a feather double five was hit to end the match I had won.
And the rest is history now double five seems to be one of my favourite doubles well
ends up on it a lot.
And you know what I never ever beat that big Scouser Chef but I am sure glad he dragged me into his mess hall
to play darts the dartboard was hung on the back of a wardrobe. 
otherwise who knows I might have been a world champion at something like shove halvepenny
or maybe  bar skittles who knows?