Week Three saw the biggest shock of the Premier League Darts so far. On an epic Thursday night in Coventry, a mere mortal had sent tremors through the world of sport by upsetting the great Phil ‘the Power’ Taylor. For the first time since Week Nine of the 2008 Premier League, the Taylor juggernaut had been brought to a temporary halt.
Then, as now, the perpetrator was the Terry Jenkins (a man rather unfairly maligned by commentator Sid Waddell as having ‘all the charisma of your local dustman’), who had summoned up all of his might to hold Taylor to a 7-7 draw. Yes, a draw, not even a defeat, but then with Taylor as short as 1/12 with some fixed odds firms to win the match, it was still a massive surprise.
In contrast to Taylor, who is deemed to be struggling if his three-dart average ever drops below 100, James ‘The Machine’ Wade was having a terrible time, which may or may not have been related to his fledgling relationship with Helen Chamberlain (of Soccer AM fame).
A disappointing World Championships, where he reached the semi-finals almost in spite of his own poor play, was followed by a dismal start to the Premier League that left him languishing near the bottom of the table with just one point from two games. However, the same week that Jenkins drew with Taylor, Wade pulled off his best result in months, rallying from a 1-4 deficit to charge past Raymond van Barneveld by eight legs to four, averaging 120 in the final 6 legs and generally playing like a man possessed by the spirit of, well, Phil Taylor.
Week Four of the Premier League came around last Thursday and brought Taylor and Wade together. I was expecting some sort of reaction, possibly even an over-reaction to the previous week’s events, and, without having seen the prices, was naturally edging towards getting with Taylor. Instead, to my surprise, it was almost as if nothing had happened: Taylor was still an overwhelming, almost prohibitively-priced favourite. Wade’s stunning comeback against Barneveld seemed to have been ignored, dismissed as a meaningless blip in form, just like Taylor’s draw with Jenkins.
I, however, saw their respective performances as indicative of something rather more significant, especially in Wade’s case, and decided to BUY WADE’S 25:10 AT 4.5. This market makes up 25 in the event of your player winning, 10 for a draw and 0 if he loses. For a relatively small downside, I had the chance to win either 5.5 or 20.5 points.
DURING THE MATCH
It is rare in sport, and probably even rarer in betting, that a match pans out exactly as you would hope, but Taylor vs Wade was one of those wonderful occasions. As it turned out, Wade had not just built on his performance against Barney in Week Three, but undergone a thorough rejuvenation. Gone was the hesitant, discombobulated thrower of recent months; in his place, the fearless young southpaw who seasoned darts experts once proclaimed the dominant force of the game’s future.
The capacity crowd in Belfast watched on, astonished, as Wade took a 4-2 lead into the mid-session interval and never relented, closing out the match with a glorious 138 finish to hand a shell-shocked Taylor a heavy 8-4 defeat. Even the Power admitted afterwards, in a rare display of magnanimity towards a fellow professional, that “James was the better man.” And indeed, the better man to bet on, as it turned out.
JW
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