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Dangerous Darts.

When darts are thrown they don't always stay in the board. Occasionally a dart will fall out and sometimes they hit a wire and bounce out flying from the board at unpredictable angles. Often the marker, who is nearest the board, can be seen to "Duck and dive" to avoid stray darts. That reminds me of a joke elsewhere in this site:-

A young man plays a game of darts who has never played before. His first dart hits the double 20. He throws another and hits double 20 again, but the third dart bounces out and hits a nun who is watching the game. The dart hits her smack between the eyes and kills her stone dead. The marker calls out “One dead nun and eighty.”  

It was because of this perceived danger to bystanders that some years ago there was a move, albeit short lived, to get darts banned from all public places in England. Fortunately the movement never received any backing and sank without trace.

If a dart bounces out of the board when going nearest to bull for start it is usual to throw the dart again, but during the actual game that is not the case. A lot of people jokingly say that if a dart bounces out and goes behind the oche you can have it again. However it is not expected. Some people try to catch a dart that bounces and it is often said that if they had caught it (Not easy) they could have it again.

Hall of Fame, John Lowe, Barry Hearn, Eric BristowDarts also go astray for other reasons. A lot of players have difficulty at some time in their careers of letting go of their darts properly. The timing of the dart leaving their grasp is wrong and the dart often flies at strange angles instead of following a smooth trajectory. Also the darts fail to reach the target accurately and often miss the board altogether hitting the wall or surround. This condition has become so well recognised that it has been given the name "Dart-itus". The condition first gained recognition when the famous Eric Bristow went through a very bad patch in his professional career and for a year or two he constantly failed to maintain a decent standard of play. The only way to recover from this condition is to play through it with constant practice if you are able to bear the embarrassment of appearing like a rank amateur.

If a player drops a dart, which often happens, it is normal practice for them to simply pick it up and throw it, but occasionally a dart is thrown and for some other reason does not even reach the board.

In fact I remember one local pub which had a low ceiling and darts were making holes in the ceiling because it was hit that much. The landlord fixed some tiles on the ceiling which prevented the darts from sticking in and usually they just fell to the floor. Some of the players could cope with this if they were the type that threw their darts very hard but if they were like me and lobbed their darts, the darts followed a curved fight path and invariably hit the ceiling.

I always used to throw for double 20 to start then and on one occasion I remember throwing my first dart which hit the ceiling tiles, bounced off and landed in the board in the bull which gave me a very acceptable bull start as the game was any double start. The landlord still remembers it to this day but thankfully the board has been moved to another room now.

Projecting beams over the lay can cause the same hazard. In a local league we use to have another pub with a beam above the throwers head, a couple of foot in front of him. I have seen a player throw all 3 darts only to see them stuck in a neat row in the beam with none of them even reaching the board.

As I have stated if a dart is dropped at the players feet they may have it again but if it has been thrown they don't. (Not usually.) Last week in my match I went to throw a dart and it never crossed the line, but somehow went several feet behind me and to the left just missing a spectator who thought he was safe way back there! When I picked it up and threw it properly, it went into the Treble Twenty, so I could not complain but my opponent did not look happy! Was I right to have thrown the dart because it could not have just been dropped to have traveled that far, but on the other hand you could hardly have said that it had been thrown at the board either. We lost the match so I did not feel too guilty about winning my game but if the match had been decided by my game I think the opposition would have had reason to complain.

 

 

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