PDC Chief Executive Matt Porter on potential Sherrock Premier League selection: "When she didn’t win a tour card it made it not a question"

Fallon Sherrock producing her exploits at the Grand Slam of Darts and heading into the World Darts Championship, many expected her to get into Premier League Darts as the first year back with fans.

This was even the case despite losing to Steve Beaton in the opening round but was diminished slightly by the change in format.

PDC Chief Executive, Matt Porter said though that her not getting a Tour Card meant that she wasn't even under consideration to appear in the line-up but that she would have been had she claimed the so called golden ticket.

"Not as close as people think," said Porter to Online Darts.

“Obviously when she didn’t win a tour card it made it not a question, because we don’t have non-tour card holders in the Premier League.

“People used to say ‘why don’t you put the BDO champion in, why don’t you put Phil [Taylor] in after he retired’ things like that. We’ve got tour cards for a reason. These people are professional darts players.”

“Fallon would have been in contention if she had a tour card. I’m not saying she would have been in, but she would have been part of the conversation," he added.

“I feel so sorry for her because she gets so much scrutiny and so much of it is undeserved. She is just someone who wants to play darts, and she was so unlucky with the pandemic, because her career was just about to take off and it really knocked it back.

“She is someone who has got a bright future, and I think people have got to leave her alone a little bit…

“It’s not her fault if someone writes a headline about her, it's not her fault if she beats a man and it gets talked about just because she is a girl who beat a man, that is just not fair.”