• Darts

Oche gladiators serve up a festive feast

The Ally Pally crowd take us back to a time when football was played in a bear pit, writes Alan Tyers © PA Photos

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I suppose there's something to be said for festive cheer and the children's little faces as they open their presents. Perhaps even for carols and turkey. But for the right-thinking sports lover, Christmas means one thing above all else: darts.

Monday will be day five of the PDC World Championship, they take a short break on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day, which always seems a great shame. What would you rather watch after Christmas lunch: top quality sporting action; or telly for children like Doctor Who or old people like Downton Abbey and Call the Midwife? It's a rare missed trick for darts.

The darts at Alexandra Palace is, for my money, the best televised sporting event other than the football World Cup. The actual mechanics of it - the camera on the business bit of the board, the cutaways to the players on the oche - has scarcely changed since the time of Eric Bristow and John Lowe.

The hoopla around it, of course, is another story. The walk-on girls, the pumping music and the WWE-style ring walks have become as much a part of the PDC World Championship as treble twenties and impossibly skilful checkouts. The way that the crowd have become a part of the show and a shaper of the drama takes you back to the era when football was played out in a bear pit and you felt that by being a fan at the game you were actually shaping the outcome in some way.

Self-confessed "miserable sod" James Wade was full of praise for the fans © PA Photos

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James Wade, for instance, who looked in impressive nick during a 3-1 first round win over Jamie Lewis, said: "Without the crowd, you lose 10 or 15 percent and they were really behind me tonight. It's brilliant - I've been such a miserable sod all my life, I haven't appreciated what they've been doing for me. Now I do and it's just amazing."

Since big-time football became a corporate, pricey "experience", there are few sporting events where you really feel the crowd - a beery, noisy, passionate mob - is influencing the outcome. Darts has that, and it's great, even though it also makes you nostalgic for a more honest sporting connection at football and cricket, for example.

Oddly, the crowd experience seems to be more self-aware than it was a few years ago, particularly in the signs people hold up. Once people know they're on telly they behave differently: you'd hope darts didn't become some sort of ironic hipster preserve. In fairness, I have yet to see a single beard this year that wasn't attached to a drunken Santa, so we're safe for a while at least.

The TV coverage is excellent: snappy, well-anchored, insightful enough; although as ever the viewing experience is not without a touch of sadness that things ain't what they used to be. No single personality has bestrode the coverage of a sport like Sid Waddell, who is much missed but never forgotten, not least because the trophy is named in his honour. Sky Sports are re-showing their excellent documentary 'A Little Bit Of Fry And Waddell', about the time that Stephen Fry joined Sid in the commentary box. It's a delight.

The other great joy of darts on the telly is how insanely good the top guys are at it. The influx of money and interest into the sport has raised the standard massively over the last few years. Phil Taylor has a legitimate claim to be Britain's best-ever sportsman, yet it is Michael van Gerwen who remains the man to beat this year.

In terms of mechanics, there's only a limited amount you can say about darts. Ditto, tactics-wise. It pares sport down to the fundamental: how do you handle pressure? Are you inspired by stress and scrutiny or do you wilt under them? It's simple, it's gladiatorial, it lets you look into the soul of the competitors. With really noisy music. Best thing about Christmas by a mile.

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