Ahead of the World Championship kicking off at the Alexandra Palace in the middle of this month,
Rod Harrington has spoken to Sky Sports and given his favourite moments before the big event starts a week today.
The first moment had to be the 2007 final between Raymond van Barneveld and Phil Taylor at the Circus Tavern which was the fitting farewell for the Essex venue which was changed to the Alexandra Palace after that and Harrington spoke about how the bullseye to decide who threw first in the sudden death allowed Barney to win his first title.
'It went to the last leg, meaning they had to throw for bull with the closest throwing first. Taylor stepped up and put a dart just below the bullseye, and then went to retrieve his dart. But back then, Barney was allowed to leave his opponent's dart in the board and that’s what he told Phil, who knew that Barney was going to bounce his dart off his and into the bull. That’s exactly what happened, Barney threw first and went on to win his first
PDC World Championship'.
The next one was between Peter Manley and a young Adrian Lewis in a moment from 2006 that is almost synonymous with the modern game and Harrington spoke about when Lewis walked off and what happened.
'The Sky Sports cameras are pretty good at picking up things and they knew something was going on, so they focused a camera on Manley’s mouth. And you could Manley saying to Lewis, ‘Give it large!’ Adrian had enough of it and walked off, and Peter turns around asking what had happened. Unfortunately for him, the camera had caught him hook, line and sinker!'.
The next one was from 2013 with MVG's 17 perfect darts which Harrington said he was commentating on and he summed it up as saying 'the atmosphere was incredible'.
Another moment was when Kirk Shepherd reached the World Championship final which Harrington summed up as saying it 'proves that anyone in our system can actually get to a world final. Kirk Shepherd did that, and although he’s done nothing since, he had his moment.'
Finally Harrington listed the start of it all when the WDC started and he said he could see the potential of the PDC back then and that he was 'always upbeat' and he knew when Hearn came on board 'we were going places'.