Phil Taylor, the greatest player ever to grace the game, flicks his wrist and the dart arcs through the dark of Alexandra Palace's West Hall. As it soars through the smoke of a thousand cigarettes, the glare of the spotlights glimmers and glistens off its tungsten torso. It looks the perfect dart, a thing of beauty and grace, the apotheosis of a thousand hours spent in damp practice rooms. Over 1,500 people suck in their breath. The tip thuds into the board, the microphone picks up the impact and a dull bass rumbles around the arena. And then silence. It is, possibly, the worst dart Taylor has ever thrown, landing wide to the right of the twenty, it sticks out of the board at an ugly angle. Taylor gets a one - and he's lucky to get that.
The crowd doesn't care though. The room erupts in cheers, as it does at nearly every dart and men and women with dartboard-shaped hats dance about with glee. Alexandra Palace has hosted some big names down the years, but it's never seen anything like Premier League Darts.
Well, that's not strictly true. The News of the World championships were hosted here between 1963 and 1977, but as the game declined it retreated to smaller venues. Now the sport of kings (pronounced with 95% pride and 5% irony by darts fans) is back and tonight's meeting is seen as a homecoming. "It's great to see darts back at this venue," the legendary darts guru Sid Waddell whispers to me. "The history, the players that have performed here. Darts is on the up."
It's easy to see why. The fans are treated as part of the event - pens and paper are handed out for the audience to write messages of support for their favourite players. They're encouraged to play up for the TV cameras that prowl the arena floor and, perhaps most importantly, the players join in. As Peter Manley races to an 8-3 win over Dennis Priestley in the first game of the evening he starts showboating. After firing off a treble twenty (roar!) followed by another treble twenty (ROAR!), he pauses, turns round and gives the audience a big grin. It's the darts equivalent of a step-over. "It's just like watching Brazil!" the crowd choruses back. Manley grins and hits a 25. That would be Brazil 2006 rather than Brazil 1974 then. "Players and spectators are together in darts, they're not aloof," says Waddell's co-commentator, John Gwynne. "There's a danger when you create superstars that they need to apart from the fans, and darts hasn't reached that stage yet."
And then, of course, there's the beer. Gallons and gallons of it. The crowd (which incidentally contains far more female and Asian faces than the average sports crowd) laps it up and as the evening goes on the chanting gets rowdier. But never aggressive. It's notable that despite the combination of alcohol and fierce support, there's no edge to the atmosphere. "You can support a player, but everyone is a fan of darts, and I think that's what explains the lack of violence at darts," adds Gwynne. "There's a camaraderie between fans there that has perhaps disappeared from football. You come to see darts, not just a player." Darren Wilson, who has come along to support Colin 'Jaws' Lloyd, agrees. "There's no rivalry, people cheer on anyone," he smiles. "Even the Dutch."
It turns out to be a happy night for Lloyd fans as he mulches Terry Jenkins 8-0, the first whitewash in the Premier League's history. It's almost a home game for Lloyd, who comes from Essex, and the sing-along as he walks in to his theme tune of the Automatic's Monster would put a thousand-strong choir of indie kids to shame. Lloyd is jubilant after the victory, but I wonder whether the fags and booze reputation of darts players ever gets to him. "We're knocked for being a pub game, but we're talented individuals," he says. "You'll always get people calling us fat bastard darts players, drinking beer all the time, but, I'll tell you what, you don't get darts players sticking needles in their arms or snorting coke."
Players are slimming down too. Taylor has shed several stone in recently, while world champion Raymond van Barneveld is on the Atkins diet. "Try standing in 100 degree heat and hitting a target this big," says Lloyd, his fingers describing an area a few centimetres across. "Then hit it again. And again. And do that consistently for two or three hours. Then add in a few thousand people in the audience and the pressure of competition." Van Barneveld's new regime seems to be doing the trick: he guns down his countryman Roland Scholten 8-5 in the battle of the Dutchmen.
Last up is the big one as Taylor takes on his former practice partner Adrian Lewis. Taylor has won the world championship 13 times, and his domination of darts makes Roger Federer look like a weekend tennis player. "He worked with ceramics before he was a darts player, and that's given him great manual dexterity, so he can control a dart like nobody else," explains Waddell. "He eliminates luck from the game, and that's why he's the best."
As I join Waddell in the commentary box I promise to keep quiet. "You wouldn't be able to get a word in, even if you wanted to, kid," he laughs. He's right. Taylor and Lewis walk on. "It's Mr Miyagi versus Daniel-san," he cries. During the next 40 minutes Waddell references everyone from Don Bradman to Spongebob SquarePants via the neo-cons currently residing in the White House. He moves and shimmies around the box as each dart is thrown, spitting out lines like an extra in 8 Mile. What comes through more than anything, though, is his genuine love for darts, and that makes him as much a part of the sport as the players. When he leaves afterwards, there's a crowd of people waiting for his autograph.
As the crowd drifts off, it's generally agreed it's been a successful night, a smooth dry run before the world championships are held here in December. Let's play darts.
