“I didn't expect the impact that it would have made” – Fallon Sherrock had no idea what her historic World Championship win would spark

On the 17th December 2019, Fallon Sherrock’s life changed forever. The Englishwoman beat Ted Evetts at the PDC World Darts Championship, becoming the first woman ever to win a match at the PDC World Championship. What followed was a media storm Sherrock could never have foreseen. Only hours earlier, she mainly saw herself as a darts player finally getting her chance on the sport’s biggest stage.

In the Tungsten Talk series by the MODUS Super Series, Sherrock looks back in detail on her life before that historic night and the events at Alexandra Palace.

Before her breakthrough, Sherrock was already a well-known name in women’s darts. She played on the BDO and WDF circuits and had achieved several successes there. Even so, she didn’t see darts as her future profession for a long time.

In fact, at first Sherrock wanted little to do with the sport. “So my family always played darts. My mum and dad always played darts at county level and they'd go to competitions and stuff to win money and that, and my sister played darts before me,” Sherrock says.

"I remember going, “I hate darts. I don't want to play darts. I hate darts. And then one day my mum was like, “Just come along, come along with Felicia and just play a youth game.” And then I played a couple of youth games, I really enjoyed it."

There was no sign of a natural talent at that point. Sherrock can now laugh when she thinks back to her first steps at the oche. “I was terrible. I couldn't even win a youth game. It was like a reserve game, and I remember I played Ricky Evans' sister, Alicia, and I played her as a reserve and I lost 2-0 with a nine average. Like, I was so bad.”

While her darts career slowly began to take shape, her plans for the future initially lay elsewhere. Sherrock trained as a hairdresser and gained the required qualifications. “I didn't expect to be playing darts or anything for a living. It was just, my focus was, “Oh, I want to cut hair.”

Darts, however, steadily grew from a hobby into a serious pursuit. Sherrock travelled more often to BDO and WDF tournaments and tried to qualify for the Women’s World Championship. When the PDC offered female players a route into Alexandra Palace via a qualifier, her mindset changed.

“I was going out every night for a couple of hours down the local pub and just throwing and playing game after game. And I really put the practice in.”

Sherrock had also seen Lisa Ashton and Anastasia Dobromyslova get their chance at the PDC World Championship a year earlier. That further fuelled her own ambition. “When they had the first qualifier, I remember watching it and thinking, 'I can do this. Like, if they can do it, I can do it.' And if anything, Anna and Lisa inspired me to do it."

Making history wasn’t her goal at that time. “I never thought I'd be that person to just win. I just wanted to go, play and have the experience of kind of doing it because you'd always see PDC on TV and I was like, 'I want to be a part of that.'"

Through the qualifier, that dream came true. Sherrock beat Natalie Gilbert in the final and could prepare for her Ally Pally debut. “For me, that qualifier actually felt like just a normal tournament. I’d played so many of them. I was mainly happy to be on television again.”

Once at the PDC, Sherrock quickly realised she had entered a different world. Above all, the media attention was on a completely different scale to what she was used to.

“Like, no disrespect to WDF or BDO, but when we used to do it, we were in a tiny little room, there were only a couple of people, like no one was really interested in what the women were doing. But then we walked into all this press for the PDC and had loads of people that were interested.”

Sherrock also had some stage experience thanks to exhibition events. She was signed to MODUS and regularly came into contact with big names in the sport.

“I think that gave me a slight advantage. I’d already experienced what it was like to be on a stage and to be around those players. Honestly, signing with MODUS is probably one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.”

Shortly before Sherrock’s match against Ted Evetts, Mikuru Suzuki came remarkably close to beating James Richardson. Sherrock watched from her hotel room. “I remember sat in bed watching it on the TV and at the time I was screaming at the TV. I was like, “Go on, Mikuru!” And I think it was, did she have double 18 as well? She was waiting on it.”

On the day of her own match, Sherrock initially remained strikingly calm. She had lunch, practised with Callan Rydz among others, and then headed to Alexandra Palace. “Then I went to the venue and I remember coming up this hill and I was like, “It's a really steep hill.” And then I saw the Palace and I was like, 'It's massive.' And I was like, 'Oh,' then it started to kind of hit me a little bit. But then I didn't really concentrate that much about it."

The real nerves only hit during her walk-on. "When I went out on my walk-on and I heard the atmosphere. And then how they introduced me and stuff, and I thought, 'Wow, this is incredible.' And the whole walk-on I was so nervous."

As soon as the referee called ‘game on’, that tension almost instantly disappeared. “I always think mentally, like, there's no point getting nervous. There's no point worrying about anything. You're there to play a game of darts. If you start overthinking, that's when everything's going to go wrong.”

"So you're there to do a job. So then once it's like “game on”, it's like focus and then just play. And if you win, you win. If you lose, you lose. But I was always like, gonna try and play my best, and if I won it was a bonus. But I never doubted myself."

What followed is etched in darts’ collective memory. The crowd swung firmly behind Sherrock and every big score drew a deafening roar. For Sherrock, that was entirely new. “When I was playing at Lakeside and all that, we weren't into all this, like, cheering and stuff like that. It didn't happen, and especially it didn't happen for me. It was against everyone else. Like, they all cheered for the other person. It was never me."

Instead of buckling under pressure, she channelled the arena’s energy. “The adrenaline kept going and kept going. And the more they cheered, the more I wanted to show off, and the more I wanted to hit stuff to make them go.”

Eventually Sherrock got the chance on double 18 to make history. Her first dart missed, but the second found the target. "Well, when the second one just flew out of my hand, I was like, 'Please go in.' I was just like, 'Just go in.' And when it went in, I was like, 'Yes, I've won a game. I've actually won a game.'"

As Alexandra Palace erupted and the darts world instantly realised something special had happened, Sherrock herself had barely grasped what her performance meant.

“I didn't expect the impact that it would have made. Like, to me, I was just so happy because I just won a game on the PDC, on the stage. Like, you can ask anyone, I've never asked what the prize money is or anything like that. To me, it's always just win.”

Only when Sherrock stepped off stage did the scale of her achievement start to sink in. “I literally came off the stage and then I remember seeing my manager, Jason, and he just looked at me. He goes, 'Oh my God, I don't think you've realised what you've done.'"

Sherrock answered as only someone could who had no idea about the media storm awaiting her. “And I've just gone, 'I've won a game.' And he was like, 'You haven't just won a game.' I was like, 'Yes, I have.' And he was like, 'You haven't.'”

Sherrock then opened the door to the press room. A crowd was waiting. “I walked into the room and there were so many people just wanting interviews. And I just then, that's when I kind of went into kind of like, 'Oh, what do I do?' because I could never do an interview. I was really bad at talking and all that.”

Fallon Sherrock had indeed won a darts match. Only afterwards did it prove to be much more than that. In one evening, a player who once lost a youth match averaging nine had become the woman who made history at Alexandra Palace.