By 6pm the fairground outside Ally Pally is just beginning to wind down, the ferris wheel has stopped going, the merry-go-round is slowing and there is a sign outside the grotto promising that Santa will be back again tomorrow. So, at that time of night, it’s little kids this way and big kids that, up the hill and on beyond the fair to the Great Hall for the opening night of the PDC World Championship. For a lot of people the trip is a winter tradition now, a little less solemn than the carol service at St Paul’s, a little less sobering than swimming in the Serpentine on Christmas morning.
The Championship has junked one of its own old rituals. The walk-on girls are gone. The PDC chairman, Barry Hearn, says he was forced into it by the TV companies. “It’s out of my control,” he said. “We’re living in changing times – the PC brigade, the liberal brigade are out in strength.”
They weren’t at Ally Pally, Barry, unless they were the bunch who had come dressed as nuns. A petition to have the walk-on girls reinstated got the best part of 50,000 signatures, but no one seemed to miss them too much. Maybe the complainers made good on their promise to boycott the event.
Anyhow, this year the women were not there to walk the men on to the stage, but knock them off it. The PDC set aside two spots for female qualifiers, which went to Anastasia Dobromyslova and Lisa Ashton. Women have played in the World Championship before – Dobromyslova did it in 2009 and Gayl King did in 2001 – but they had wildcards and neither made it through the preliminary round. A woman has not beaten a man in a world championship, but Ashton, a four-times world champion, was in the third match on Thursday night, and she had not come to make up the numbers.
There were a few whistles when Ashton started her walk-on, but they were drowned out by shouts of support. Soon enough, everyone was up and chanting her name. It was the biggest, loudest crowd Ashton has played in front of. She had never even been to Alexandra Palace until now. And she loved every second of it.
It helped that she was English since she was drawn against a Dutchman, Jan Dekker, a fine player who has twice made the semi-finals at the BDO world championship. But it was not just patriotism that inspired the punter, but Ashton’s play. She is 48 and not easily flustered.
Ashton swept the first set 3-0, 15 darts for the first leg, 15 for the second with a 110 checkout, 12 for the third, with a 121 checkout on the bull. She averaged 107 in it. That was fantastic under such heavy pressure, which, now, had switched entirely on to Dekker. He handled it well and took the second set 3-0. Ashton could have done without the break between sets, which broke her flow. “I let my guard down,” she said.
Dekker was shouting and screaming now, which only showed how nervous he was. “It was so tough,” he said. “No one in the world’s expecting a guy to lose to a woman.”
If Ashton had managed to play as well in the third and fourth set as she had in that first, she would have won them, too. But her level fell off. “I’m a bit gutted, but I’m happy too,” she said. “I wanted to show that we’re definitely not scared of the men, that we’re ready to get up on stage with them.”
If anything, she said, the men are scared of them. “Up on stage we’re both just players, but still, a man doesn’t want to lose to a woman.”
Dekker agreed with that. He likes the PDC’s drive to make the game more inclusive. He just didn’t want it to happen at his expense.
Despite what Hearn said, the PDC hadn’t gone so very PC. Ashton still had to walk on in front of three scantily clad cheerleaders, who were all shivering between routines because they had so little on and the night was freezing cold.
She didn’t seem to mind that. She was a lot more exercised about the lack of prize money on the women’s circuit. She pointed out that if darts really wants to bring on the women’s game, the BDO will need to increase the rewards for playing. Dekker won £15,000 for making the second round here, which is more than Ashton did made for winning the BDO world championship last year.
In the past decade, Ashton has won eight majors, but her career earnings are £125,000. The winner here will make five times that much. Last year, the men’s BDO World Champion took home £100,000, the women’s £12,000. “We’d be happy with just a quarter of that, £25,000. Or half, we’re not being unreasonable,” she said.
She made her point pretty well on Thursday night. “I wanted to make the ladies proud,” she said, and she did.
