Out of the tube station and up the hill they file, drawn to the bright lights like moths to a warm flame. At the top of the hill, a snake of buses spits out convoys of German tourists. For the next three weeks London is the centre of the darting universe, and Alexandra Palace is its friendly local: a place of long tables and four-pint pitchers, of old songs and familiar faces.
More than anywhere else, London is where the soul of darts resides. It was in the Red Lion pub in Wandsworth in 1926 that the rules of the sport were first agreed and codified.
The London dartboard, with its idiosyncratic layout and double and treble rings, became the global standard. The working-class boozers of London have spawned some of the greatest players of the modern era – from Eric Bristow to Bobby George, Andy Fordham to Peter Wright – and in London Fields by Martin Amis, perhaps the only great darts novel.
But this is a drowned world now, a lost world. Walk a mile in any direction from Alexandra Palace, where the Professional Darts Corporation hosts its world championships, and the rich darting heritage that birthed a worldwide phenomenon exists only in ghosts and whispers. The Arundel Arms in Stoke Newington, where the teenage Bristow played for sixpence a game, was demolished in 2013. The Two Worlds in Plumstead, where the legendary George Noble first refereed, closed in 2014 and now sits derelict. The Clothworkers Arms in Angel where the commentator Wayne Mardle first played is now a block of smart brick townhouses.
Meanwhile the conveyor belt of talent that once flowed abundantly from the pubs of the London Super League to the county circuit to the world stage has long since run dry. Of the 31 English-based players arriving in London for this year’s world championship, only one – Croydon’s Connor Scutt – actually lives here. East Anglia, Merseyside, the industrial towns of the Netherlands: these are the sport’s new heartlands. St Helens, Bedlington, Milton Keynes and Hastings can all boast more elite players than the nation’s capital.
“This was the world of darts,” remembers George. “Walthamstow, King’s Cross, Tower Hamlets. You played Super League, and if you was good enough you played county, then England, and that was your stepping stone. That’s all gone.”
Of course there is no real mystery to any of this. Since 2001 the number of pubs in London has fallen by around 50%, and many of the rest have reinvented themselves dramatically to survive in a world of rising rents and the rising cost of living.
“Most pubs, they’re not pubs any more, are they?” says Wright, who now lives in Suffolk but honed his trade in the pubs of south-east London in the late 1980s. “They’ve all turned into restaurants, trying to earn a living. I played seven nights a week, and there would be five divisions. Now you’d be lucky to get one.”
Wright’s first team was the Lord Derby in Plumstead. It was where he became friends with Noble, whose father George Sr owned the place. “It was one of the hubs of south-east London darts,” says Noble Jr now. “They had all the best players, a lot of pros. All the best players in the world played in the London Super League. Now, if there’s 20% of those pubs still open, I’d be surprised. And if they’re open, they’re not venues to play darts in.” The Lord Derby, for its part, closed in 2012 and is now a Nepalese restaurant.
According to Justin Irwin, the darts coach who runs the Capital Arrows blog, the number of public venues with dartboards in central London has fallen from 110 to 62 in the space of a decade. But some of those have digital boards, while in some the board is not readily accessible. “Your traditional darts pub with a dartboard in the corner, there’s probably only about 40 of those,” Irwin says. “They’re still closing, and none are opening.” Only the other day he received news that the Prince William Henry in Blackfriars has finally shut its doors.
For Irwin, the decline of the classic London darts scene is a product of demographic as well as economic factors. High rents, rising costs and gentrification have driven out not just the traditional boozer but its traditional client base. “A lot of people can’t afford to live in London,” he says. “And a lot of people who used to play darts in London don’t live there. If you’re only working in London twice a week, you’re not going to travel in to play darts.”
In its place, a new and very modern phenomenon has arisen. For almost a decade in the heart of London, darts-themed bars like Flight Club and Oche have been reinventing a traditional pub game for a younger, wealthier, more corporate clientele. Boards are booked by the slot for up to £60 an hour. You can order bao buns and pizza paddles to your seat. This is darts reimagined for the office party crowd, served with cocktails and waffle fries. And it bears the official seal of approval: last month the PDC held its official world championship media launch at Oche on the Strand.
“I think they’re a great idea,” says Noble of the new breed of “dartertainment” venues. “But I don’t think you’re going to find the next world champion playing in Flight Club. Although the standard’s grown in the professional game, the standard of grassroots pub darts has gone down. When I played in the county teams, the average would probably be three or four points higher than what they are today. There’s still some good players, don’t get me wrong. I just think players don’t play in pubs that much.”
All of which raises a paradoxical question. By almost any measure, this is a sport in the grip of an inexorable boom: more viewers, more interest, more sponsors, more participating countries and more aspirant players than ever before. Tickets for the world championship seem to sell out faster and faster every year. The growth of darts has always been its ubiquity and low barriers to entry. But if the stars of tomorrow aren’t learning their skills in the pub, then where are they?
“They’re at home,” says Irwin. “The pandemic did wonders for darts. The London league I play in has more than 200 players in it, and they all fall into two categories. Either they’re a scaffolder or decorator who’s always been playing. Or a 20-something professional who took up darts when they were furloughed during the pandemic and got bored at home. That’s where things like Flight Club are actually helpful. Because darts is around, and therefore not entirely invisible.”
These days darts is a global sport, and a more professional sport too. For younger players the increased prize money has made it a viable career pathway rather than something you simply get good at by accident. The Development and Challenge Tours run by the PDC offer the route into the professional game that was once provided by the pubs and working men’s clubs. Indeed one of the hottest stars in the game, the 16-year-old Luke Littler, is still not even old enough to order a pint.
“It’s a younger person’s game,” says Noble. “Most players these days take a drink before they play, but I don’t think that will be the case in 10-20 years’ time. The younger players will learn to play without.”
And so perhaps the story of London darts is also the story of the city as a whole: an old world washed away by new tides and new traditions, new money and new ways of doing things.
It is even possible to see in the fancy dress and jaunty songs of the modern darts crowd, an ironically affectionate pastiche of darts as it used to be: a place not just to spectate but to congregate, sport unfolding to the background hubbub of rowdy banter and clinking glasses. The old boozers are long gone. But in a strange kind of way, you can still glimpse their essence every time you watch darts.
