Price on effect of crowd abuse after infamous Anderson clash: “It was a point where I thought: ‘Is it worth it any more?”

Gerwyn Price spoke several times about missing the crowd in recent months. The Iceman said he needed the fans and the accompanying adrenaline to achieve his best darts.

A huge turnaround for the Welshman, who hasn’t been the biggest fan of them in the past. Price has been regularly cast as the pantomime villain by the crowd. At one point, the reactions from the crowd were so bad that the former rugby player thought about quitting, he said in an interview with The Guardian.

The reason was the behavior of the fans at the World Grand Prix in 2019. Price lost to Dave Chisnall, with an average of only 79. A low point according to The Iceman.

“I think I was 1-0 up and I was trying to get the game won and finished so I could get out of there. I had the crowd on my back and I was being given lots of bad messages. It was a point where I thought: ‘Is it worth it any more?’ I’m glad I stuck to my guns,” said Price to the Guardian.

“If you’d asked me that day, I would have said: ‘Yeah, that’s it, I’m done.’ For 24 hours I was giving up. But then you calm down and say: ‘No, I’m not walking away.’”

For Price though he has seen a shift of sorts in the way he is perceived with social media being a good barometer. “I seem to be getting a lot more positive feedback,” he added. “I don’t do much Twitter. My wife does but she says it’s more positive feedback – like most of the messages I get on Instagram. I could have 500 messages and five of those would be negative. So the positives definitely outweigh the negative now whereas a few years ago it was probably 50-50.

One incident harks back to Price’s start as this so called pantomime villain and that is his infamous clash with Gary Anderson at the Grand Slam of Darts which he said people didn’t realise that he plays the same against everyone.

“People don’t realise that, even before I played Gary in 2018, my game was exactly the same. That one incident changed so much because it was in a major final against someone who’s got one of the biggest fanbases. People don’t seem to understand that I played that way whether against Gary, Michael or one of my brothers. I still play the same way now.”