"He’s standing there, in the Canadian shirt he used to wear, in the pouring rain" - Wayne Mardle recalls incredible John Part story from Premier League Darts early days

In recent years, the Premier League Darts has become one of the biggest and most lucrative tournaments on the calendar. But the tournament did not always have that aura.

Wayne Mardle was there in the early years, as he recalled a remarkable anecdote to the Daily Star about how one of the stars in action and three-time world champion, John Part was forced to wait in the rain alongside the fans in fancy dress for a taxi home. Something that seems unimaginable for the likes of Michael van Gerwen and Luke Littler today.

“This is the growth of darts in a nutshell,” Mardle explains. “John Part is queuing with everyone else to get a taxi out of Sheffield Arena."

“He had been last on that night. There were no cars laid on and there he is. He’s standing there, in the Canadian shirt he used to wear, in the pouring rain with everybody else. You wouldn’t see that now, would you? I was in the car with Peter Manley and our other halves. It was just a case of ‘sort yourself out’. John always used to do his own thing, but still…"

“Nowadays, you can’t get near the players. They’re like Premier League footballers. There are cars and mini buses laid on for the players. It shows you how far the game has grown and how professional it has become.”

“We were told it was a travelling roadshow, that we were going to grow the game of darts,” Mardle recalled about the early days of the Premier League. "Yes, it was going to be competitive because you want to win, but it was about entertainment. It wasn’t seen as that serious."

"We were going to places like Colchester, Norwich with 600-700 people. Then one week at Bournemouth, which is 3,200, it was like ‘wow’. It was as if it was the most amazing thing we’d ever seen. We weren’t going to places like Holland and Germany. Aberdeen or Glasgow was the furthest we would go. It was not like it is now, it was so different.”