SURREY DARTS

December 2004 - by Martin Cullip 

A Pair of Beauties for Surrey!

Are you sitting comfortably? Good, because we’ve a lot to get through this month including TWO superb victories for the County side. So put your reading glasses on & we’ll bring you up-to-date on the news you missed while the Surrey Column was absent from the last issue of Darts World.

Why the strange disappearance of this column last month I hear you ask? Well, it’s a long story that has its roots at the beginning of the season when an almost entirely new County committee was sworn in after numerous retirements and resignations. Part of the inevitable teething troubles was the decision to move the November Inter-Counties match with Northumberland to the preceding weekend as it was noted that a large Surrey contingent was booked into Great Yarmouth prior to the Kaliber BICC fixtures being announced.

Of course, with our home venue being Epsom Royal British Legion, moving such a match to their most important weekend of the year, the one comprising Remembrance Sunday, was always going to be tricky! Any other weekend & the County may have gotten away with it, but with the Legion having already planned a whole host of celebratory events, a venue had to be found at very short notice to accommodate an entire County weekend! Not an easy task considering that venues of the required size are usually booked up to a year in advance for weddings & parties & the like.

However, after much searching, wailing & gnashing of teeth, a place to stage the match was indeed found thanks to the incredibly helpful Steward, Committee & Members of the Rhodrons Club in Chessington: And so it was that two postmen, a kitchen fitter & a Darts World columnist of dubious quality found themselves camped for the best part of three days at the Club (hence no time for yours truly to write the Surrey pages), frantically beavering away to bring the stage & practice areas up to the standard required of high level County darts.

Incredibly, and no doubt against all calculable odds, the old adage that “Something’s bound to go wrong!” didn’t apply in this case & the weekend was a hugely enjoyable one, not least because it culminated in a very welcome heavy victory for the home side.

After an extremely poor start to the season in Lincolnshire, this 24-12 defeat of Northumberland was much needed & may have a lot to do with the enthusiastic atmosphere generated by the fact that everyone involved was confined to the one large room & not scattered around a larger venue as we have been used to.

The Ladies definitely noticed an increased level of support for their matches, which yielded immediate dividends as the Ladies B initiated the weekend with a battling 4-2 result, rounded off by a Lady of the Match performance from Julie Austin (16.34) to seal the victory after good wins from debutant Marie Bathrop (16.22) & Helen Cullip (15.99) in particular.

The Mens B followed up this success with a good team performance of their own, with Darren Everett (21.12) taking the vital 7th point after fine displays from Peter Arnold (24.22) & Man of the Match Neville Wright (25.79), who was making his first ever County appearance & would go on to feature in the A team match on the Sunday.

The atmosphere on the Sunday was again boisterous, and again the Ladies benefited from support emanating from the area of the newly-built stand alone practice boards, so professionally supplied by Super League player Steve Catt of Ashvale Sawmills near Guildford. With all the men practising in full view of the stage, instead of outside in another room which is sometimes the case at Epsom, the Ladies A were spurred on to a battling 3-3 draw, with Apylee Jones (21.60) again taking Lady of the Match. Special mention must go to Lucy Johnson (16.68), who won her first A team game in a tense five-legger, despite intense pressure from Angie Best.

The Surrey side were in confident mood, but nothing could prepare us for what was to come next as the Mens A ran away with a crushing 10-2 defeat of their North Eastern counterparts. Ray Smith (24.54) stepped back into the County scene with a fine display, before Neville Wright (26.35) confirmed the victory for the County & completed a perfect weekend for himself. Steve Lovett (30.24) followed up with a Man of the Match showing & Surrey were 6-0 up! Further heroics including a tense win from Carl Ramsey (24.56) & a fortuitous last game from John Skehan (20.36), as brutally & hilariously highlighted by Northumberland’s effervescent Ali Murphy in the after-match speeches, gave the Mens A double figures & ensured that Surrey would leap out of the relegation places in the Division 1 table. The scoreline may have been very harsh on the visitors, as especially on the Sunday, there were a whole host of matches that went the distance & could have gone either way. That the vast majority went to Surrey may well be some divine entity redressing the balance for the times we have suffered unjustly in the past couple of seasons.

A Real Wow in Slough

A result such as that against Northumberland would be very hard to follow for the confident Surrey squad, but December’s match against Berkshire at the Britwell Ex-Service Club in Slough produced a scoreline almost as impressive as the last, with Surrey running out 22-14 winners against our neighbours.

The Ladies B again began proceedings with a good victory, and Julie Austin collected her third successive Lady of the Match, edging Helen Cullip (16.49) as the girls helped Surrey towards another glorious weekend by taking the match 5-1.

Again, the Mens B followed suit & again it was Darren Everett (21.24) who ushered home the winning point in the Final game of the day after Ray Elnaugh (25.51) & Tom Eley (24.54) had performed well, but nowhere near as well as Surrey’s resident leprechaun Roger Kitching (31.02) who took Man of the Match with a performance that I think even HE was surprised by!

The good news continued with the Ladies A winning 4-2. Apylee Jones (22.09) took Lady of the Match (where have I heard that before?) but was ably assisted by fine games from Gill Shephard (19.45) & Lucy Johnson (17.09), who hit a stunning 11 dart leg on the way to her 3-1 win over Mandy Pawley.

Mens Team Manager Tony Cartwright didn’t need to say much to rouse his players after the previous month’s incredible result, I believe his exact words were “I’m loving this! It looks like you lot are too! Go & do it again!”, and although they could only manage a 6-6 draw this time around, the quality of the match shone through.

In a remarkable display of forgetfulness not seen in these parts since Peter Arnold forgot his darts on two successive County weekends a couple of years ago, Carl Ramsey arrived at Slough in good humour despite the fact that his darts were 40 miles away in Worcester Park! It was quite predictable then, wasn’t it, that he would borrow a set from team-mate John Skehan & calmly carve out the best County match he has ever played to take the Man of the Match award with a whitewash for a 28.90 average! I understand negotiations are currently in progress for Carl to purchase said darts.

Captain Jason Kelly (26.38) had opened proceedings with a stubborn performance to finally edge Colin Powell in five legs & good wins from Neville Wright (21.66) again & Keith Benson (25.71) contributed to another generous helping of points for Surrey.

How things have changed since that disastrous early season thrashing by Lincolnshire! Surrey now sit comfortably in the top half of the table & may even have an eye on the top of the table, with only 9 points separating the County from Lincs in pole position ... well, stranger things have happened!

Young Guns Shooting Stars

The progress of Surrey’s reformed Youth Squad continues apace, and while the seniors were running the north easterners of Northumberland ragged, the youngsters were doing the same in the far south west as they racked up their fourth win in as many matches with a 13-5 scoreline against Cornwall.

The Boys Under 18’s now top their Table & the Under 21’s are level on points at the head of the pack with the very strong Glamorgan A side. Not bad for a team that didn’t exist this time last year.

Regular readers will know of the quality of Surrey Under 18 star Anthony Hopkins, but lesser known are unbeaten Surrey players Trevor Nash, Darryl Pilgrim & Trevor Watson, as well as the likes of Chris Forbes, winner of the Highfields Under 18 event at Clacton in November, Ashley Smith, who was recently just one dart away from a Super League victory over the ‘unbeatable’ Dave Askew, and Lee Smyth, who is a regular member of the Golden Lion team that has high hopes of Super League success this season.

The girls have talent aplenty too, with Charlotte Lee already a senior County B player, and Angela Crook, Faye Ketchell & Sophie Pourou all gaining useful experience for the future.

The Youth side don’t take to the stage again until the New Year when they take on Dorset, but they will have an extra warm glow this Christmas when they look back on a truly successful year for the Surrey Youth set-up.

A Hull of a lot of Talent

It was very interesting to see so many members of the current Surrey Mens Super League in the draw for the PDC World Championship Qualifiers in Hull on the 4th December.

Almost every board included someone either currently signed for one of the Super League teams, or a recent participant in the League of which we in Surrey are so proud.

In all, 14 players who have taken part in the League this year made the long journey north, and this doesn’t take into account Lionel Sams, Dave Askew & Peter Evison, who had already qualified for the Purfleet extravaganza

Of course, Peter Manley, Bob Anderson & Cliff Lazarenko are all also former Surrey players who are regularly featured in PDC events. Hopefully, some of the current Youth side can continue the conveyer belt tradition that Surrey has for producing great players decade after decade. They could hardly have better examples to follow!