Former World Champion Deller urges Rock to press on with confident attitude: "I said don't have too much respect for any of them"

Josh Rock's darting rise has been storied in 2022 and ahead of his debut PDC World Darts Championship, he is confident of potentially adding a World Darts Championship to his World Youth crown.

1983 World Champion, Keith Deller has urged Rock to press on with his confident attitude and not to respect anyone in his surge to the top of the game.

“I saw Josh at breakfast during the Grand Slam, I told him he has a similar attitude to me,” Deller told Daily Star Sport.

“I told Peter Purvis, the Blue Peter presenter, at the beginning of the week [before his World Championship triumph] that I thought I would win it. Yes, they were better than me in terms of the rankings but I was coming from nowhere.

“If I went up there and thought ‘they’re brilliant’, I’m giving them a head-start. But I wasn’t giving anyone a head-start, they would have to beat me.

“I said to him, ‘don’t have too much respect for any of them’. That’s not being horrible, but why should you? I told him ‘don’t give them any respect at all because none of them deserve it’.

“You’ve got to have that ignorant attitude. If you start saying ‘he’s a good player…’ well we know that, he’s won tournaments. If you start building the other player up, all you’re doing is giving them more confidence.

“Eric [Bristow] would never say ‘he’s good’, he’d just say ‘I’m going to beat him’. You’ve got to have that way of mind because a good loser is never a good winner.