There are few things on this planet which never disappoint. The World Darts Championship is one of them. Every year on the year, it bestows an unstoppable fortnight of dramatic brilliance, amplified by a bloody lot of bloody fun. There is nothing like it.
The game itself is simple, repetitive, comforting and compelling; sending a dart from hand to board is a rhythmic, hypnotic, idiosyncratic treat – the bass beat on contact complemented by the intellectual thrill of calculating scores and predicting outshots (the finishing sequences). Because it is immediately obvious what is going on, it is immediately absorbing, and because so many of us know how easy it is to play but how impossible it is to play well, we have a handy frame of reference to swiftly make it about ourselves.
Nor does it stop there. Darts is about far more than chucking a pointy thing at a flat thing; it tells a story of humanity that is animated and crystallised in close-up and high-definition. No other sport shows, simultaneously, action and reaction; on stage and on camera, there is nowhere to hide.
Brooking neither luck nor tactics, darts facilitates neither refereeing errors nor stalemates; excuses do not exist. Players can do nothing to affect one another. If things are going badly, no teammate will be along to save them, and there is no option to roll into the reds, deadbat a few or cover up on the ropes. Their only option is to throw better.
As such, there is no more exacting test of pressure, no examination of vertebrae more thorough. Under lights, on camera and in front of a crowd, perform a fine motor skill predicated on a steady hand and an empty mind – good luck with that.
“But is it a sport?” ask the kind of funsters who, in other scenarios, prattle on about the differences between indica, sativa, serotonin and empathogens. The correct answer, of course, is: “Who gives a shit?”
One of the most beautiful things about sport is that it allows us to share the most exhilarating, demoralising moments of people’s lives, entwining them with our own and supplying an intensity otherwise lacking – and darts takes that to another level. We see every expression of tension, fear, devastation and ecstasy – you might call it love – so feel that we know the players, and accordingly, can imagine that they know us too.
Because of that, darts offers a study in humanity to captivate not just those who like darts but those who like anything – its themes the same as those found in literature, theatre, cinema and art. Or, put another way, enjoying it is not a matter of taste; rather, there are those who do and those yet to discover that they do.
And, at the moment, darts is the best sport in the world. This is partly because others are regenerating; there are very few great teams and great individuals currently at their peaks. Darts, on the other hand, has never been played better. Michael van Gerwen won 25 tournaments last year, and 18 tournaments in 2015. He also set a new record for the highest three-dart average ever recorded on television, 123.40 .
Van Gerwen is not just the best dart player in the world but the best anything in the world; one of the best anythings in the history of everything. And he is only 27.
But, as with any great sportsperson, to assess van Gerwen by his numbers is to miss the point entirely. A wondrous bolus of uncut genius, his competitive charisma is startling – a mix of passion, intimidation, egomania, and the most distinctive phizog of all-time. He throws darts like flaming javelins, celebrates like a psychopath, and because it is impossible not to know how good he is, he makes no attempt not to know how good he is. He is perfect.
But he has won only one World Championship, in 2014 – the two since then taken by Gary Anderson, his good friend and polar opposite. A laidback, likeable Scot, Anderson is prone to miscounting and, until very recently, to mis-seeing. Only recently did he start wearing the glasses that he’s needed for years. Early in his career, Anderson was the man who faltered at crucial moments, but after working through family tragedy and adding another son to the two he already had, he convinced himself that it wasn’t important whether he won or lost and suddenly became the man who peaks at the right time.
The World Championship format is to his advantage. Generally, matches take place over legs, a succession of races from 501 to zero. But here, each forms part of a set, offering a margin of error to the inconsistent and absent-minded – playing legs against someone as relentless as van Gerwen is almost impossible.
And tonight, the pair meets in the dream final. Anderson, almost disquietingly relaxed, has sailed through his half of the draw, while van Gerwen recorded the competition’s highest ever average in last night’s win over Raymond van Barneveld. It is not unreasonable to anticipate as gripping a contest as has ever been played.
Yet Anderson and van Gerwen are simply part of a sprawling ensemble cast, the limelight shared not just with their opponents but the crowd. The simple genius of an affordable piss-up stretching the length of the piss-up season has created an experience unlike any other, part fancy dress party, part community singalong.
Nauseatingly cringeworthy though that sounds, the ethos of abandon cool all ye who enter here makes an enveloping, uplifting change from the self-conscious self-regard that compromises most other places of enjoyment. The atmosphere is partisan, but in support of everything; the feeling is tribal, but as one. At the start of 2017, we have never needed darts more.
Daniel Harris is a writer, and co-directed House of Flying Arrows, a documentary about darts, for Universal Pictures. Watch the trailer , and buy the film here. Harris tweets @DanielHarris.
Bought a coffee on the way into work? Feeling bad about having immediately broken your new year’s resolution? Well, maybe you needn’t worry too much – because there’s some good news for women: the Resolution Foundation has published findings suggesting that the gender pay gap is down to 5% for workers in their twenties.
Exciting, hey? Think of all those extra flat whites – I mean, deposits into your pension scheme – you can buy with that. And, with the pay gap squeezing shut for younger women, surely there are good things to come as our generation gets older.
Well. Not necessarily. Because, even though women graduates are now cashing pay checks with numbers closer to their male peers’ than ever before, the report also suggests that women will still earn significantly less over a lifetime as the gap widens after age 30. Happy New Year, ladies!
Not surprisingly, the usual chorus has begun to sound , reminding us that actually this is something women choose for themselves. You see, the pay gap is influenced by the decision to have children. A 2016 report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, for instance, found that the pay gap really ramps up in the 12 years after a woman has her first child, dumping her out the other end earning 33% less than men. Surely, the choice is simple. Want more money? Don’t have babies.
Sadly, it’s not so simple. Putting the pay gap down to just “choice” is to read the world – and women’s lives – in disturbingly limited terms. True, it’s easy to think of having children as being a personal decision someone makes, especially if you’re not so keen on the idea yourself. But it’s not the full picture.
The fact is, the raising of children is socially necessary labour – i.e. if you don’t do it, someone else has to. And it isn’t only about the continuation of the species. As the number of people living beyond the age of 65 soars , our society must urgently address the care needs of older people. Part of that is figuring out who will provide services, from nursing to technological development, for that ageing population. Want to make sure there’ll be someone sprightly enough to get you out of bed in the care home? Then you’d better hope people keep having kids.
Viewed this way, taking the time off from paid labour to raise children isn’t an indulgence – although anyone who has wiped shit off an infant’s back could have told you that, anyway. It’s necessary work that benefits everyone.
But why, then, should companies compensate for it? Surely if it benefits everyone, it should be the responsibility of the state.
Well, partially. That’s why we have things like a childcare allowance , however meagre, and child benefits — although those also exist because we are a welfare state, and don’t believe in infants going hungry, however financially fragile their parents’ lives are. Yet companies also benefit from the unpaid or low-paid labour women undertake to raise children.
If you want to understand why it’s the responsibility of companies to compensate for maternity leave and child-rearing, all you have to do is try rephrasing the maternity pay gap thus: “men often get a pay bonus for the extra years they can work while women give birth to and raise their children”.
Family homes with children still make up the largest portion of households in Britain, so let’s consider an achingly stereotypical one, in which the mother takes several years out of work to get her children through nursery and into school, at age five. Her partner may take shared parental leave during the early part of that period – but, well, most men still don’t , and these are stereotypes, so let’s say he goes straight back to work.
While his partner is at home, spending her days dealing with all the highs (smiles, first words) and lows (industrial quantities of poo) of parenting, his career continues almost uninterrupted. His employer does not have to find, hire and train cover staff; nobody e-mails him when they should be e-mailing the new person; projects don’t unravel in the confusion – and so on. In short, it saves them cash.
His partner, meanwhile, will eventually scrub the last bit of mashed potato off her cardigan, accept she’ll never get that felt tip pen out of her boots, and trot back to work, where her lower earnings will be framed as a “choice” she has made.
Obviously, this situation is not ideal. For a start, plenty of men would like it to be more socially acceptable to also enjoy the smile-poo rollercoaster of parenting alongside their partners, preferably without the financial complications that come with having to choose whose career should take a bigger hit. (Bonus factor: in some fields, women take more of a career hit for having children than men, even before we get to time taken out of work. Try reading “ The Motherhood Penalty vs. The Fatherhood Bonus ” if you fancy a scream.)
More than that, though, it is obviously unfair for women to be penalised for doing work that benefits not only, well, generally everyone, but specifically employers.
So what can we do? Well, we could try putting up tube posters telling men that shared parental leave is really cool. But really, companies just need to step up. In 2018, companies with more than 250 employees will have to start making their pay gap statistics public. To me, it sounds like a great deadline for salary parity across your business.
And as for us ordinary citizens? Well, my recommendation is simple: stop using the word “choice”.
© Source: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/sport/2017/01/why-you-should-watch-world-darts-championship-final-even-if-you-don-t-darts
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