A Long Weekend In Wigan!

[Stubby]

Saturday - arrived at the venue just before 10am, knowing I was on floor managing duties I tick off the markers as they arrive and waited for the draw when I can assign the sportstat operators to decent boards, quite difficult without the top 16 there so I hope I picked well??

Once the matches start My duties are to collect the results and update the control desk and the Sportstat control desk as well as looking after the markers, getting the floaters in the right place to take over when needed and to assign last 16 and quarter final markers when the time came.

Very tired at the end and my aching feet were relieved to sit down and watch the final, superbly won by Brendan Dolan against the day's surprised package Ricky Evans.

Saturday night was spent in the Toby by the hotel before going back and crashing for the night.

Sunday came all too soon but I was greeted by Daz looking at me with an evil look, apparently I kept him awake all night snoring! (I had a great night’s sleep!!).

After a little brekkie (Who I am kidding? It was an all you can eat buffet!) it was a trip back to the venue, fortunately the accident that was blocking the M6 was southbound and didn’t affect us too much and the people in the car escaped serious injury. Arriving a little later than planned we checked in with Adie and waited for the day to start.

Board 16:

Alan Tabern 6-4 Jelle Klaasen
Nigel Heydon 6-5 Michael Mansell
Jim Walker 6-4 Mark Walsh
Josh Payne 6-3 Matthew Dicken

Jelle started the better, but Alan dug in and kept himself in the match and got his chance to take the match.
Nothing between Nigel and Mickey in this game, and both players did enough to win but Nigel managed to win the decider.
Jim played really well to get the better of Mark, constantly hitting one big treble each handful to put Mark under pressure and eventually breaking him to set up the win.
A great last game between 2 up and coming players, at 3 legs a piece I was expecting it to go all the way but Josh got the break which Matt couldn’t come back from.

Alan Tabern 6-1 Nigel Heydon
Jim Walker 6-1 Josh Payne

Nigel didn’t play anywhere near as good as he did in the first round but saying that Alan rolled back the years and never let him get into the game.
In the second game Jim struggled to find the weight of the dart in the treble 20 and switched to playing 19’s with great success. Constantly hitting 133’s and 171’s to which Josh had no answer.

Alan Tabern 6-5 Jim Walker

Another Cracker - Jim went 3-0 up playing on 20’s and looked like he was cruising, before losing the weight of the dart again and allowing Alan to capitalize to get it back to 3-3. Jim then switched to 19’s and the next legs were shared with throw. So at 5-5 both players missed match darts before Alan managed to get one in to progress

Steve Beaton 6-0 Alan Tabern

Poor game for Alan on the doubles, he must have missed a good dozen darts in the first 5 legs, and really should have been leading. Steve did play well though and probably put Alan under pressure to miss the doubles.

Final
Ian White 6-3 Andy Jenkins

Last game for me was the final, and with Daz calling, it was a major plus for the marking scheme.
The match started with both players exchanging legs with throw, at 3-2, Ian got the all important break of throw only for Andy to break back. That was the last leg Andy won as Ian took the next 3 to win the title.

Next day was the GSOD qualifers so we rock up back to the venue, knowing we only had 7 markers the plan was to cover the top 4 seeds and then float the rest of the boards so that if any players went missing then the play wasn’t held up.

As one of the floaters I managed to mark a few games:

Scott Coleman 4-2 Darren Johnson

Scott played well but I’ve seen Darren play a lot better than today, the short format was brutal and didn’t allow for any errors to be rectified.

Jelle Klaasen 4-0 Jack Petcher

Jelle had no problems here and the match was very straight forward for a player of his ability.

Ian White 4-3 Brian Woods

I can honestly say I’ve never seen Pecker play as well as he did here but he missed 12 match darts to win 4-2 and after Ian levelled the game you could see Brian was thinking about the previous leg. This allowed Ian to take out the match.

Finally done for the day and after a lot of running around all day, helping the board officals get players to the board, I watched the last few matches play out and the qualifiers win through to Wolverhampton.

A very long and tiring weekend but well worth it.

[crispy1978]

Good write up Stu. I noticed when I was checking through my board that I didn't mark one of the top 4 seeds....!!!! I blame Mark!

[spaceman70]

Excellent write up, cheers Stubby.

[Lee Taylor]

Great insight Stu.

[Booji Boy]

Love reading this and good to see the trend of posting snippets from these on other sites still exists.