Finally Winmau Day - 5 Dec 2008

After yesterdays inspirational game for the World Pro Playoffs, I feel confident I will play well again today.

The time of my game also helps as its quite late in the afternoon at 2:15pm with ample time to relax and focus.

I play against a young Danish player who just appears old enough however the same thing can be said of me jejejeje even though I am now 32.

For this game I was even better prepared than yesterdays and although I started slow, very very slow and saw myself 2 sets down, I had full faith that I could turn it around. So it was!!!! my robot arm came into action and before I you knew it we were 2 sets a piece and playing the deciding set.

It was basically 1 finish a 120, 1 dart at tops which I had that changed the game and he went 1 nil up on the 1st leg of the deciding set.

He started the next leg and credit to the young kid he played fantastically and he got the better of me to beat me in the deciding set and take the match.

On reflection of both events I am very happy in the way I played, considering I practice 10 to 20 minutes a day and its only on the lead up to a major that I push up the practising to several hours a day, I truly cant complain about my performance as it was rather good and my compatriots who were offering full support can attest to that.

Oh and by the way I only practice 10 to 20 minutes because of lack of time in my personal life and because of my hard efforts for the GDA otherwise things would be different and I could dedicate more time to improving my darts to a very very high level which is how it was before I came over to Gibraltar from the UK when I used to play proper darts 7 days a week when possible.

For this reason I keep telling the committee about how we need to tackle things so that I have more time on my hands. Its very frustrating to know I misuse my time for GDA work but as things stand that's just the way it is (but it has to change)...

Our best result was at the Winmau were Dyson Parody won 2 games and lost in the board semifinals. He did Gibraltar proud and had a run to reach the last 64.

After my game I had the chance to collect our banquet & Sunday player tickets and also meet Della Fleetwood the WDF Treasurer.

I went to the hotel to get the dollars and told her about the change from $550 to $240 dollars, let me tell you she was not happy about the change in the invoice. All I can say is that I honestly thought it was a mistake on her part as $550 reflected the total number of players that we have in the GDA which is not even close to 250+ players so I modified the invoice to reflect this.

As it turns out the $550 also reflected some fee because we ranked the Gibraltar Open, however I didn't want to argue with her and kept professional about it, especially as I had a few pints and its like driving if you drink don't drive (argue) as you are liable to get into trouble jejejejeje.

Anyways she sort of read my face and realised its more difficult to get an argument from a stone than from me so I just apologised and told her we would cover the remaining costs after the Gib Open. She did have a go at me for some other reason and that I apparently amazed her on some questions I have asked for help on before. Quite frankly one must ask if unsure.

I also cleared with her a pending issue as she still believed thats its easy to make a Money Transfer which can be carried out via Western Union. At that point I made it very very clear to her that that is impossible in Gibraltar and the only way to transfer money via Western Union is for collection at the closest Western Union to her home and that the money will not be delivered to her place of residence.

To be honest its quite amazing that the WDF does not use paypal or some other online payment gateway as that would simplify the collection of monies for nearly all countries involved. It might take a bit of time and some learning but it would simplify the collection of monies tenfold.

We briefly also discussed some issues with the BDO/WDF & PDC and how the PDC had banned some USA players several years back and denied participation into the WDF World Cup . She made it very clear to me in our discussion that you will never get a problem UNLESS the ripples in the water start becoming waves, ie. players start winning stuff or start to be known around the circuit.

What could I say, I agreed and I mentioned some of the problems as per my email to the WDF concerning some players who had gone to the PDC and that I hoped for the GDA's sake that our flexibility in allowing PDC players to have the best of both worlds doesn't slap us right in the face and for example as she mentioned being banned from the World Cup and leaving a team with 3 or less players instead of having a full squad.