Darts

ivoralljack

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MVG beats Jonny 6-3 in the final. TWELVE more sliders from Jonny including 4 in the first 2 games, 5 in the first 3. Later on he hit treble 20 with his first dart and scored 70 then later still hit treble 20 with his first dart and scored 68!!!!!!!!!! MVG was scoring heavily but missing some doubles, however because of his sliders Jonny wasn't in position to take advantage needing a three figure checkout instead of a double figure. Said it before but he needs to address this huge flaw in his game before he can challenge consistently at the top. Liverpool next up a week from now.
 

ivoralljack

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Seventh night of the Premier League in Nottingham. Gez and Jonny meet in the quarters so one Taffy will score nowt tonight. Neither are playing well enough to win the evening and the pundits are split between them. MVG will probably win again as he's been back to somewhere near his best this year. To make matters worse, he'll be smarting for losing in the final of the UK to a rank underdog, so I reckon it'll be all guns blazing this evening.
 

ivoralljack

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Iceman (98 av) beats the Ferret 6-4. Jonny had 14 sliders to Gezzie's 6, so you have to ask if they cost him the match. In fairness both players had blatant deflections that threw good darts into the minor beds and some of the others were on the wire. But sliders are sliders. One such example was at a critical 5-4. Gez was on 190 and Jonny on 106. Jonny's first dart went straight into the middle of the 1 bed and left him little chance of leaving a decent finish. Gez went on to win the leg and the match.

Interesting point about Jonny's stage name. Ferret seems a tad disrespectful but it hails from his rugby days when he was known as a 'ferret' of a scrum half. Not a lot of people know that! :LOL:
 

ivoralljack

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Gezzie in final after beating van den Bergh 6-4. He was 3-1 up, then down 3-4 as VDB rallied. Then he got back to 5-4 before taking out 156 against the darts for the win. Had some terrible slides and missed 5 darts to make it 4-2 in a 22 dart leg as VDB was struggling to break 3.

He now plays either Chris Dobey or MVG. Dobey finally beat Bully Boy 6-4 after missing two darts for a 6-1 win. MVG still favourite for me.
 

ivoralljack

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Amazing!!! Dobey beat MVG 6-0 that's SIX NIL!! o_O And MVG wasn't bad either. It's just that Dobey was brilliant and Gez must be a worried man after seeing that. No prediction from me, I keep getting them wrong. :LOL: Gez average is 99.26 and Dobey is on 97.36 for the evening. Hope Dobey has shot his bolt because a repetition of his form in the last game will make him very hard to beat.
 

ivoralljack

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After going behind 0-2 then missing 5 match darts at 5-3 Gezzie won the night 6-4. He was still sliding but took out finishes of 110 and 138 and grazed the wire for an attempted Big Fish 170. It's a great format with 8 players competing throughout the season, the top four going into the play-offs on Finals night. Currently Gez lies second, well behind MVG and Jonny is 7th with a lot to do. The make-up of the competition sees Gez and Jonny playing each other again next time out. As Jonny is more in need of the points, I guess I'll be rooting for him but as long as one of them does well I'm happy.

PS: Like snooker, the short format often sees the better players lose and I think a race to 6 is too short. That said, any longer and you couldn't fit the games into an evening, so I guess it's a case of let well alone. The commentators and pundits love it as it is though.
 

ivoralljack

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Premier League 8th night in Newcastle. Gezzie slaughtered Jonny 6-1 in the quarters and looked in good form (his 98+ competition average is the highest in the PL right now). Jonny was awful and only just avoided getting the lowest ever average in the PL by getting 80+ in the game. His sliding was horrendous again. I couldn't be bothered counting but he threw way over a couple of dozen off-target darts in the game. Typical were two throws. In the first he scored 60 first dart followed by 2 x triple ones, then later 60 first dart followed by 2 x triple fives. Then he got 2 x triple 20s and his third dart went plumb in the middle of the 5 bed inducing a remark from the commentators. It's a major flaw in his game that he has to rectify.

On the same subject, Peter Wright threw 21 'wayward' darts, as the commentator described them, in the first 8 legs of his game against MVG. In the end he only just lost 5-6 against an off form Dutchman and the commentator said that undoubtedly those wayward darts cost him the game. Similarly, Jonny is losing games because of the sheer quantity of sliders that he throws. As a pro this shouldn't be happening. I mean, if you miss the treble you should at least find the big bed. Jonny far too often doesn't and it's costing him. Back to MVG whose will to win you have to admire. Against the darts in the final game he took it with a finish of 2 x 60 and a double 15 for a 150 out. Brilliant.

Local lad Chris Dobey just beat Bully Smith 6-4 and will now play Gez in the semis. If Gez thought he was getting boos before....... :LOL:
 

ivoralljack

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Gez beat Dobey 6-4 in a routine match but had a scare as he missed a match dart at 5-2 and an off colour Dobey rallied to make a game of it. MVG awaits in the final and I see him winning it. But I'm often wrong and hoping I am again.
 

ivoralljack

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Boy was I wrong again!!!!!!!! Gez blasted MVG off the board in one of the finest displays of darts I've ever seen. :eek: He missed a match dart at 5-0 which would have whitewashed MVG but won the next leg to take his second final in a row 6-1. HIS AVERAGE WAS 114.96, the highest in the Premier League for six years. They showed various texts on screen during his post match interview that described his performance as 'unbelievable', 'unplayable' and 'outrageous'!! It was all of those things and more and he's now going for 3 in a row next week in Berlin. Can't wait. :)

His first game is against Peter Wright who is nothing like the player he has been. But poor Peter is suffering many problems off the board including the serious illness of his wife. I sincerely wish him and his missus all the very best and hope she makes a full and complete recovery to good health.
 

ivoralljack

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Just to make us darters feel bad, Fallon Sherrock recently became the first woman in PDC history to nail a 9 darter in a competition in Germany.
 

ivoralljack

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Premier League in Berlin tonight. Jonny plays MVG in the quarters and I expect the Dutchman to win as he'll be smarting after his 1-6 trouncing by Gezzie in last weeks' final. Gez goes up against Peter Wright who has no chance of qualifying for finals night but, this means no pressure, so he just might relax and find some form. Nevertheless Gez should win and if he replicates last week's form he should win the night. BUT I don't think anyone can find darts as good as that two weeks running, so it might be a case of after the Lord Mayor's.......
 

ivoralljack

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Jeez!!! How often can a guy get it wrong? Limitless in my case it seems. Jonny sneaked past a totally out of form MVG 5-5. He was up 2-1 then 4-2 but missed 3 darts to make it 5-3. It was 5-5 then Jonny broke to win the last game.

Comms were saying that throughout the PL season Jonny's doubling has been fine but it's been his scoring that's let him down. More evidence that he throws far too many sliders to win the big competitions that he was winning a couple of years back. Gez plays Snakebite now. He should win but what do I know?
 

ivoralljack

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Got something right at last as Gez beat Wright 6-3 with a routine win. I didn't realise that, during the week Gez won the European Open in Germany, edging Dirk van Duijvenbode 8-7 in the final. Along the way he beat MVG and hammered Bully Smith, the reigning World Champion, 6-2, so he did it the hard way. Great performance. Now he meets Jonny in the semis so we're bound to have at least one Taff in the final. Bully meets Nathan Aspinall in the other semi.
 

ivoralljack

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And it's Jonny who prevails beating Gez 6-4 ending a long losing run against him. Jonny's now upset the odds twice tonight - 86% viewers fancied MVG to beat him and 78% favoured Gez. They're as bad at forecasting as I am!! :) Jonny now plays Bully who'll be an absolute red hot favourite. He beat the Asp in the semis and had consecutive 10 darters wiring the double 12 for a 9 darter in the first of them. The winner? With my record I'm keeping stum!! :LOL:
 

ivoralljack

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I'm gob-smacked!! Jonny beat Bully 6-4 to win the night and I'm still not sure how he did it. o_O He missed two darts for a 4-1 lead then Bully missed two for a 5-3 lead. Jonny threw so many wayward darts tonight it was unbelievable but he got away with it. However, I'm convinced that he'll never consistently win the top competitions because he throws so many points away. Literally!!

That said, he won the night by beating MVG, Gezzie and Bully and that takes some doing. Think how good he'd be if he cut back on his sliders. So it's on to the 10th night next week in Birmingham and Jonny plays Asp first who's one place above him in the table. He's in 4th spot whilst Jonny's #5, the top four at the end of the season fighting out finals night. All to play for.
 

ivoralljack

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Missed the Birmingham night as I didn't know it was on!! I checked the TV listings but I didn't see it. Anyway, Jonny Clayton won the night beating Peter Wright 6-5 in the final. He had previously beaten Aspinall then MVG in the semi. That's two wins in a row for Jonny who's moved up from 7th of 8 to third in the table with six nights to go.

MVG is still top with 27 points, Gezzie is second with 22 and Jonny now has 17. Don't know how Gez fared on the night but back to Jonny who, according to what I read, has changed his darts back to the ones he was using a while back when he was so successful. Different darts might account for the wayward stuff from him that I've been moaning about. Interesting to see how he performs from here on in.
 

ivoralljack

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Just found some news on Gez who's been beating everybody up in Europe; in Germany specifically where he seems to be very popular. He won his second consecutive European Tour event last week beating MVG (his 4th consecutive win over him) 8-4 after leading 6-1 and averaging 105.6 in the final. His fourth triumph in the last five editions of the International Darts Open comes a week after winning the European Tour in Leverkusen said one report and it's great to see our Taffy darters doing so well.
 

ivoralljack

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Premier League in Brighton tonight and Gez through to the semis having beaten Chris Dobey 6-2 and averaging 115.97 in the process! o_O Halfway through he was averaging over 124!!!! He plays MVG next in what should be an explosive game whilst Jonny has it all to do in his quarters game against Bully Boy Smith.
 

ivoralljack

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Jonny went down 4-6 to an off-form Bully after having a dart for a 4-1 lead. I didn't count but he must have thrown well over 20 darts into the wrong bed tonight and that is far too much to give your opponent in a race to 6. Of all the top players, I reckon Jonny is easily the weakest in terms of scoring and the reason is very obvious. Down 4-5 Jonny had the darts, put his first two in the 60 bed and the third went firmly into the middle of the 5 bed. Instead of a minimum 140 he scored 125 and this repeated, often, throughout a match, spots his opponent far too many points. He's won the last two nights, so credit to him but he didn't win because of his heavy scoring. Comms were saying that it was his doubling and the TIMING of the heavy scores he did get that clinched it for him. Imo, he needs to up his average by about 5 points to join the real big-hitters.
 
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