Another Friday - 11th Oct 2008

For the past week I have been visiting the GDA PO Box as the Darts World magazine should have arrived in Gibraltar by now.

Finally a fruitful trip!!! As promised I now have in my possession a photocopy of the original letters written way back in 1995 by Joe Goldwin & Carmelo Ellul when they wrote to the darts historian, Patrick Chaplin on the history of the sport of darts in Gibraltar.

Some conflicting evidence has been found from these two letters and some new information stated by Joe Goldwin about the origins of the GDA. He states that the Gibraltar Civilian Darts Association was formed in 1952 (we previously thought this was in 1956) . Their is also a gap of 10 years when Joe states we became affiliated to the BDO (1963) and when Carmelo says the same but in the year (1973), the year before the 1st World Masters Individual Darts Championships now famously known as the Winmau World Masters.

Anyways this gets me thinking if Gibraltar is one of the oldest registered sports in the World so I email Joe Hernandez from the Gibraltar Sports Authority and copy this email to Patrick Chaplin, Harry Parody & Tony Dawkins (all of which might also know). Patrick Chaplin as per usual gets back to me within 30 minutes and lets me know that New Zealand has darts registered as a sport in the 1980's which blows my hopes away of being the 1st jejeje.

Anyways Harry Parody also obliges to my question and he tells me that "the association was recognised as a sport by the Gibraltar Sports Advisory on Wednesday 25th March 1998 i was secretary at the time and it was i who made this jump for us. I wrote a 12 page letter to the advisory making our point as to why we should be a sport in Gibraltar. I will give this very important document to you as i think by now it should be framed".

Rightly so Harry and thanks for your input and efforts at the time, cos without us being a sport it definitely would have hindered on the progress we can make abroad because of the financial assistance we would be lacking from Government if we never had become registered.

In continuation with the history of the sport I also email Dave Obee (GDA 1st Chairman) so that he can confirm to me if the association (GDA) started in 1956 or 1958 as we have conflicting evidence. I also sent him the 50th menu for him to choose what Dianne (his partner) and he want to eat at the Gala dinner.

I am chuffed to bits about these recent discoveries as all these findings are solid evidence to start fitting the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle.

Oh and by the way I still haven't thrown a single darts this week week so I am seriously looking forward to tonight and PLAYING darts for a change.