A
Presentation Night To Remember
Phil Taylor
presented the prizes for one of the
local men’s darts leagues on Monday 18/7/05 to a packed house at the Castle in
Rugeley. As everybody hoped he took on challengers afterwards, one player from
each team in the league. It is common practice for the superstar to give his
opponent the start but Phil was having none of that and made everyone bull up.
Someone said maybe he was not feeling very confident after one of the
challengers beat him last year!!!!
The
games were not all of a standard that we have come to expect from the worlds
greatest darts player but as he said he plays better under a little pressure and
only a couple of his challengers managed to do put him under any.
In
the first game Phil did not score less than 100 a throw finishing with a 121 but
although he hit his first 180 of the night in the second game the general
scoring was poor by Phil’s standards. He missed the 40 finish and took another
15 darts to get the double. Phil had a couple of slow games till a player from
the Swan stepped up and started with a ton so Phil stepped up a gear and dropped
in another 180. He also had a brilliant game against someone from Brereton Town
Football Club hitting two 180’s, a 140 and finishing 701 in about 16 darts.
In
the last game against the Globe Phil was well in front as usual, but he messed
up his finish and started to fool about to give his opponent a chance. Phil had I don’t know how many darts at a double giving his opponent
plenty of time to come down and even have a couple of shots at a finish, but he got
fed up in the end and dropped a dart in double one.
There
were a couple of games that Phil played well in but did not overwhelm his
challenger and those were against young Simon Ward of the British Legion (The
team I play for) and John Brindley. They both excelled themselves but were
simply outclassed. As you might expect nobody beat Phil Taylor on the night and
afterwards he gave a few minutes chat and answered some questions. During this
time he stated that in the last 6 months or so he had won about 300 thousand
pounds in prize money. In his words there never was a better time to be playing
darts!!!