by Rick Nash
This week, we switch attention briefly to darts, to mark the start of a new-look Premier League format that kicks off this Thursday in Belfast (and journeys to The O2, Dublin on April 18th with six matches scheduled to take place).
Hardcore darts fans have grown tired of the Premier League in recent years and, it has to be said, it's not an opinion without merit.
For a start, due to the fact that it is an invitation-based tournament (only the top four in the world qualify by rank), it also means that it's essentially meaningless when it comes to ranking points on the PDC Order of Merit. Not to mention the fact that it's looooonnngg: the tournament spans 15 weeks, with 14 devoted to the league itself (formerly of 8 players meeting each other twice; with the top 4 then qualifying for a one-night 'Playoffs' tournament to decide the champion) and, due to the nature of darts, form tends to ebb and flow over the course of those weeks, unlike the exciting nature of Open tournament whereby an off-night could see you out of the running altogether.
This has led to the dominance of one Phil 'The Power' Taylor over the years, the reigning champion who has won all but two tournaments since the format was introduced in 2005. Taylor, in fact, went undefeated in his first 44 games in the tournament before eventually being stopped in 2008 by James Wade. However the long format generally allows players who suffer a dip in form to regress to the mean, allowing the best players to consistently come out on top and making an already-long process seem predictable to boot.
Realising this, the PDC has freshened up the format, introducing an additional two players to the fray, reducing the length of games from 'Best of 14' to 'Best of 12' and introducing 'relegation' where the bottom players don't actually get relegated to any lower league, but instead just drop out of the league altogether after week 9. The shorter format could be a bonus, making it more likely that longer-form players like Taylor will lose more regularly, or a negative in that a lot of matches will end up as draws with players not having time to establish any kind of rhythm or dominance. It remains to be seen.
The case for the Premier League, and I remain a fan myself because of this, is as follows:
