Sunday 25 November 2018

This Premier League selection meeting is going to be fun, or is it

Well that was an interesting end to the season. Daryl Gurney's gone and binked the Players Championship finals, and as such pretty much retained his Premier League place. What an absolute clusterfuck that is going to be. We've now got van Gerwen, Cross, Wright and Anderson close to clear as the top four with Gurney not far behind, Price will be in, Wade will be in, leaving out Barney for a farewell tour seems inconceivable, leaving out Suljovic seems equally ridiculous, leaving out Smith given he was the runner up last year, won a World Series title and has put up sensational numbers all year would be just as daft. That's ten right there, so maybe it's suddenly become quite easy. I don't know. Maybe if Lewis smacks up Barney, shocks MvG, makes Wade looks silly and then at that point we're only in the semi finals, or someone else makes a deep run to make a case, then it gets interesting.

I'm going to post a bunch more tomorrow evening once the worlds draw is done, but let's just say this - it seemed pretty clear when first reading that the spot for whoever won the world youth would go to the Pro Tour. Now it's not so clear, and it seems as if Matt Edgar will now need to go through the qualifiers as the world youth spot will be released to the PDPA qualifier - unless Corey Cadby can't play. We're less than 24 hours from the draw. We surely must know by now if he can or not. This is complete amateur hour stuff. Couple in the fact that apparently Hearn on Twitter has said that the first round draw is going to be the Pro Tour 32 in one pot and everyone else in another (seemingly in June but nobody noticed until now), and we have the beyond stupid situation where it would be hugely beneficial for one of van den Bergh or Schindler to have thrown the world youth final and qualified through the Pro Tour rankings. It also goes counter to the idea that Asada won through the Japanese qualifer and that Asian Tour spot he would have used then goes to the Asian Tour. Then again, Luke Humphries had a spot through the Development Tour, but didn't use it as he was in through the Pro Tour, so that went to the Development Tour. We are talking about a sporting organisation with multi-million pound prize pools in a single event, and we're still only working out right now who is in and who isn't. It took us forever to work out what the heck was going on with the Nations League, but UEFA at least announced all the rules in advance, it was just the rest of us trying to work out what was going on as it was such a new concept. It's not like there's no precedent for the PDC to just make things up, just last year they announced wildcards from nowhere to get Ratajski etc in. It's incredibly disappointing that they can't get something that's clear and unambiguous well in advance - you run on a yearly cycle, the year starts in six weeks. Sort it out.

New FRH rankings:

1 Michael van Gerwen
2 Rob Cross
3 Gary Anderson
4 Peter Wright
5 Daryl Gurney (UP 2)
6 Gerwyn Price (DOWN 1)
7 Mensur Suljovic (DOWN 1)
8 James Wade
9 Simon Whitlock
10 Michael Smith
11 Ian White
12 Phil Taylor
13 Darren Webster
14 Jonny Clayton (UP 1)
15 Dave Chisnall (DOWN 1)
16 Joe Cullen
17 Adrian Lewis
18 Stephen Bunting
19 Mervyn King
20 Steve West

Not that much movement in the top 20, oddly enough. Lennon breaks into the top 32, Noppert is only a couple of places behind, making a weird spot where we have a Dutchman at number 1, no others in the top 25, but five in the next ten spots after that. Dobey's back knocking on the door of the top 40, while Stephen Burton is in the top 80.

The final roll a dice to decide the number of world championship spots qualifier takes place tomorrow, as does the draw, unless some nameless hack gets caught in traffic again, so hopefully 24 hours from now we get some clarity and we can start talking about the darts, rather than technical bullshit. Congrats to Daryl, congrats to Lisa, and let's hope we get some interesting draws. I wanted to see Noppert draw Ratajski and have a knifefight. I wanted to see Evans draw van der Voort and the game be over in five minutes. I wanted to see Kumar draw Puleo and not have a clue what was going on. I wanted to see Ashton draw Dobromyslova and then get van de Pas for peak publicity. Alas, we can't have nice things.

As an aside I'm probably moving to a new domain soon. Will let you know when/if it happens.

No comments:

Post a Comment