Durrant reflects on effects of winning Lakeside World Championship: "I got a lot of hate, a lot of nasty emails and messages"

Glen Durrant currently leads the Premier League table and has been heralded as a result of a brilliant first year in the PDC but it wasn't always that way for the Teesside ace.

Durrant spoke recently in an interview with Josh's Dartistry and reflected on previously winning multiple Lakeside World Championship titles and how in reality he received a lot of abuse and ridicule for winning it.

He said that one particular message made him go for it and join the PDC and show everybody that he was worthy of being part of the elite.

“What people don’t realise is that when you win a Lakeside you get ridiculed, you get laughed at,” Durrant said to Josh's Dartistry. “I remember one particular one – I got a lot of hate, a lot of nasty emails and messages.”

“The one that always resonates with me, he said: ‘Glen Durrant wins the Lakeside Championship. I reckon if I went down the boozer on a Friday night and had an hour a week, I could be Lakeside champion.’

“For all the thousands of messages I read, for some reason that’s the one that always stuck in my mind, so I knew to get those three Lakeside titles respected, I had to go over to the PDC and I put my reputation on the line.

“If I had bombed, if I had a nightmare first year then what would those Lakeside Championships have meant to me? It’s been a real rollercoaster and I’ve loved every second.”