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Lights, Darts and … Action!

The close season preparations had been completed. The venue negotiations; the setting up of the stage; the friendly; the possibles and probables match; and the sponsorship cheque was safely tucked away in the bank (well, I say safely, we haven’t seen our bank mentioned in the news as having fallen apart … yet). So after the teaser trailers, now it was onto the Big Feature.

That’s when Yorkshire went all X-rated on us. It was Butch & Sundance taking on the Bolivian army; it was having muskets loaded but seeing 10,000 Zulus coming over the hill! We were the switchblade-waving mugger confronting Crocodile Dundee and he blithely remarking “Call that a knife? THIS is a knife!”, except in our case, Yorkshire were sending the message “Call that darts? …”. Our hosts welcomed Surrey to the Premiere of ‘Inter-County 2008/9’ and invited us to feel free to keep the scraps of spilled popcorn and overpriced pick ‘n’ mix that they left behind (“… oh yeah, and sweep the floor before you leave will you? There’s a good county”) in a weekend that ended with a less than cheerful 28-8 roasting.

Our first point in our return to the Premier Division came courtesy of Lauren Hitchens (16.90), who was making her Surrey debut after a very impressive time in our youth system that culminated in a National Final on the Lakeside stage back in July, but that success came after the previous 5 games had been lost in a disappointing Ladies B match for Surrey.

The more observant of you will have noticed that with the new format, the 6th Ladies match was in fact scheduled at number 14 in the running order. Yes, Surrey really were 13-0 down at that point as the Mens B had also failed to find a winner after the first two sets of four matches, probably much to the horror of supporters watching the gloom unfold on the Surrey web-site’s live text update service.

There was a bit of a rally after Lauren showed the way, with Carl Ramsey (21.14) and Henry Keet Jr (22.78) winning the next two matches, but Saturday culminated with the home side 15-3 up and Surrey A team players must have been hoping for a Hugh Grant-style sweet ending the next day.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be even lightly sugar-coated as our Mens A were butchered like extras in a Quentin Tarantino movie. Only Gary Creamer (26.25) & Jason Kelly (25.41) were able to avoid being strapped to a chair and having their ears cut off by an immensely strong Yorkshire Mens side seemingly on a mission to strike down on Surrey with ‘great vengeance and furious anger’ (enough with the Tarantino references - Editor) for the temerity of having been promoted. The Ladies A, with Laura Turner (21.16) taking the match award, admirably struggled to add respectability to the weekend scoreline with a 3-3 draw, but by the time the team coach arrived back in Surrey, the BDO web-site was probably already being prepared to show the world that our county were castaways (like Tom Hanks but marginally less smelly) at the bottom of the BICC Premier Division.

Fast forward a month and it is fair to say that Surrey hosted Oxfordshire knowing that only a strong showing would do. That’s no easy task seeing as the visitors had only lost 2 matches since September 2003, but Surrey were able to increase that figure with a 21-15 success to lift ourselves off bottom spot and raise optimism about the rest of the Premier Division campaign.

It was another youth graduate that got the ball rolling as Darryl Pilgrim (22.25) led off with a win in the first match of our first fixture at the new Worcester Park venue, but his early team-mates were unable to add to that and, apart from Helen Cullip (18.11) taking the Ladies B match award, there was little to cheer as Surrey went 2-6 down in the initial exchanges.

However, Surrey had taken a tip from the local war zone that is Croydon and had traded up our darting cutting edge from polite civility to urban guerrilla warfare. Oxford could play Crocodile Dundee but we would play Rambo!

Ray Smith (28.36), Alan Yates (26.00) & Match award winner Gary Eastwood (29.01), upped the pace to gain a draw for the Mens B after the Ladies had also rallied to 3-3. The Sunday proceedings carried on the upward trend as Surrey punished finishing errors from their visitors to gain a welcome weekend victory.

Laura Turner (20.59) claimed her second Lady of the Match in as many games as the Ladies A battled to another draw in the face of very talented opposition, before our Mens A rode off into the sunset at the end of the weekend with a 9-3 match and fixture-winning performance.

Spike Harris (24.11) dug deep early on to carve out a foundation win, and he was followed by quality finishing from Jason Kelly (27.29) and a solid display from Gary Creamer (26.84) to maintain their 100% records. The possibility of a weekend loss was banished by the Ladies and the Bonus points secured with the last few male players, most notably Richie Blake (27.42) and Ian Long (30.33, pictured right), who cemented his transfer from Middlesex with a first Surrey Man of the Match award.

Surrey’s Premier Division campaign has been a box of chocolates experience so far, (‘ya nevah know what ya gonna get’), but a daunting trip to Cheshire beckons which could prove to be a pointer as to whether we are to be a rising star performer in the Inter-County Premier production or just a bit-part actor who has over-reached their ambition. After the Oxfordshire win though, it’s clear that the credits have not yet rolled on Surrey’s future involvement despite being cruelly left on the cutting room floor at the hands of Yorkshire.

No animals were harmed in the making of this column.

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