"If you fine a player who's earning this much money, £250, they're not going to a Players Championship"– Glen Durrant explores punishment for skipped events

With the darts schedule getting more packed for the best players in the world, sacrifices are being made. However, that comes at a cost, with the Players Championship and European Tour competitions sometimes getting overlooked. Glen Durrant suggested how to solve that as he analysed the other new tournaments. When speaking to Online Darts, he also spoke on the worrying trajectory of Michael van Gerwen and whether he would be able to climb back up the darts rankings.

Darts is currently booming, with so many talents emerging and rising up the darting ladder. However, compared to the mid-2010s, there seems to be a drop-off in terms of standards among the players.

"Honestly, I'm surprised at that," Durrant reacted, with just the two Luke's meeting or surpassing those expectations on a consistent basis. "I mean, because statistically, it's my forte, I love it. If you'd have asked me the question, I thought the averages right now superseded what was going on in the golden period, just because I just feel that the top 32 was better than it was."

Durrant advised the players to stop finding excuses and get back to work with Luke Littler racing off into the sunset. "It's surprising, but like I said, if you speak to a lot of the players, 'I'm tired, the calendar, it's really busy,' and blah, blah, blah, and the competition's at the peak. But they need to buck their ideas up because there's one player there who will break all records, on the back of the matchplay where he was sensational as well with those numbers. Like I said, it's a war of attrition to be a professional darts player. I think he's given himself a set time to do it, but the rest will have to pick up to do it.

"It's not that they're complacent and lazy, but I ask them, when do they get a chance to actually practise? If you look at football, they've got a game on a Saturday, sometimes a game midway, and then in between it's the practising, the training. These players don't get time to train now. Pretty much their match practice is the Pro Tours and things like that, so they're not getting the opportunity to do what we're saying to them, 'Buck your ideas up.' It's very hard. It's a bit of a catch-22 situation really."

He still found comparisons between prime Michael van Gerwen and current Littler. "But that's my favourite era of darts, 2015 to 2019. I thought it was sensational. I've just been looking at the numbers about Michael van Gerwen because we're looking at how many major games he'd won consecutively compared to what Luke's doing."

The 2027 PDC calendar has got a lot of attention and created much discourse with some notable inclusions. A European Tour in France for the first ever time has left the former Premier League Darts champion slightly bemused.

"I was a little bit surprised that they're going to go to Lille. France is obviously Thibaut Tricole, etc. But I'm pleasantly surprised it's going to France," he admitted.

"The job of the darts is to get to every country in Europe. For me, I'm right in the middle of the World Series now where we're going to territories I never thought we'd ever go to. Madison Square Garden, I still pinch myself there. So France is a new area to go. When I went to Belgium, the numbers didn't look as good as the ones during that boom. But you're going to have that plateau, that whole Littler effect where everything just went bonkers."

While the sport is still very popular thanks to the Littler effect, he backed the decision by the PDC while having full faith in them. "The PDC, they know. They'll make the right decisions. I think I say them words: I have full faith in the strategic direction which the company is going in now. And if it's France, then so be it."

Another talking point is the European Open, a new major tournament. Durrant was a fan of the format, with it following in the footsteps of the UK Open. "The format I like as well, so it's really exciting. Again, where you're going to fit in the calendar is another question. So I'm going to look and wait for the calendar to come out fully to really digest it exactly how we do. But more opportunities."

He did share some concern about the extended European Championship. "My only fear then is more people are going to pull out of the Euro Tour because it's easier to qualify to get to the top 48 out of the Players Championships. So I think that area sort of needs addressing as well, but more opportunities."

Durrant suggested how this could be tackled on the Players Championship circuit. "I wanted to look at how other sports are doing that. Is that one way? I guess the one direct is, do you fine someone? But if you fine a player who's earning this much money, £250, they're not going to a Players Championship. To them, £250, I don't know. I don't know the answer. And I'll go back to the fact that strategically, I'm sure they'll come up with the right answer because it does need addressing. You don't want to go to — I love the Players Champs. As a commentator, I love going to Wigan, Leicester, etc. I love going to all those and doing that, but I want to see the best players there."

Van Gerwen is evidently not in his best form. The three-time world champion is set in this current moment in time to drop to 19th in the world at the start of the 2027 campaign. After years of being in the top three, that status has been taken away from him with early exits and inconsistent displays costing him dearly.

"I heard him say at breakfast, 'If your head's not in a competition...' So I still think he gets motivated for the TV tournaments. I still think he gets up for them," Durrant commented.

"But if you're not doing your bread and butter very well, if you're not doing the Players Championships and your mind's not in it, I think there's a few flaws with the issues. He's been working with the points of his dart. The 30mm is now hanging out of the dart, whereas he used to put a 30mm point, so you're putting a couple of mil into it."

He offered some coaching advice while offering a similar perspective from his career that in turn sends a daunting message the way of the Dutchman. "He's been working on it. I think when he was talking, it was his follow-through. Maybe you messaged me and we chatted, possibly it's his grip and that. All I would say, and I can only sort of look back on my career, is that when I start to go downhill, it's very, very difficult then to all of a sudden go up. His mind is probably telling him what he wants to do, but physically and mentally trying to do that is a different equation."

Some players prove this trajectory wrong. "I mean, I thought Jonny Clayton maybe had reached his peak in 2021 when 2022 didn't go as good, but he's proved that you can still do that," he said. "And also that age of when you get to 50 as well. So not that Michael's got that sort of issue, but there's other things that you've got to take into factors as well.

"But when you do go on the slide, and that's why I admire the likes of Daryl Gurney, who's just sort of hung around that top 32. Even that's very difficult to do. But when the slide starts, and maybe when you start thinking, "I can't believe that Michael's thinking, I'm going to do this with my throw. I'm going to put this with my point, because when you're the best, you're instinctive. And in 2015, '16, '17, when he was unbeatable, he just threw a dart. And like I say, I can only go back to my experiences, and once I started overthinking the situation, it was a problem."

He was pitched with a fantasy matchup of prime van Gerwen against current Littler. "Oh, that's a good one, because I only ever get asked the Phil Taylor one, of which I asked... Oh, that's a good question, that one. I think you would say MVG."

He continued analysing this, outlining the impact Littler has had on the sport from a different point of view. "A younger audience. And it's more the impact of what he's doing. You mentioned me being a coach there. I don't think I'm so busy because I'm a wonderful coach. I think I'm busy because people just want to throw a dart now, and they want to know the fundamentals, how to throw a dart, and I think a lot of that's down to Luke Littler."