"Sometimes journalists need to just go back to their qualifications and do their research" - Matt Edgar criticises fake news in media coverage of Luke Littler

After spending much of the 2010s on the PDC Pro Tour, 'Prime Time' Matthew Edgar dropped on the professional circuit back in 2021 and has since been seen competing in the WDF.

Edgar can also regularly be seen working as a pundit on Sky Sports' Love the Darts podcast among other things. As such, the 37-year-old Englishman is still very much up to date with what's been occurring in the darting world. The most recent big happening came in Blackpool at the World Matchplay, where Luke Humphries continued his dominance of the major ranking title over the last twelve months, lifting the Phil Taylor Trophy.

"I thought it was a really good Matchplay! There's a lot more stories when you get to the World Matchplay," Edgar reflects in conversation with Online Darts. "It was a good tournament but once again, we got to see that the seeds are just that much better than the rest of the pack."

Only four seeds lost their opening round match at this year's edition of the World Matchplay, despite there being, on paper at least, plenty of potentially tricky ties. "There was so many games where you thought 'that could be an upset'. But again, the seeds just confirmed that maybe the ranking system, as much as it may need tweaking, isn't as far away from the true reflection as people may think it is."

One first round tie more than any other got people talking at the Winter Gardens in 2024. Luke Littler vs Michael van Gerwen. In the end, it was the Dutchman who triumphed, going all the way to the final before eventually losing out to Luke Humphries in a World Matchplay classic, but Edgar was left more concerned about the response of the media to Littler's loss.

"Since Luke's came on the scene, the attention's gone away from Van Gerwen a little bit. He probably feels people are overestimating Littler's ability. As he said himself, everyone is beatable, Luke Littler is beatable and people need to realize he's beatable and remember he's beatable," Edgar analyses. "In fact he (Littler ed.) is favourite for the World Championships when we've got a dominant world number one in Luke Humphries right now."

"But Luke Littler is a special talent. He's going to be what people think he is, he just wasn't on this occasion at the Matchplay and it has since come to light there's some personal things going on for Luke (a relationship breakup with his former girlfriend ed.)," Edgar continues, although he isn't worried about the teenage sensation. "He's someone who's not let it go to his head and I think that's going to put him in good stead moving forward to get back onto that winning run."

As mentioned though, some of the media coverage of Littler does leave a lot to be desired in Edgar's opinion. "The ones that get me are the ones that when he lose at a Pro Tour event and they act like 'no one turned up to watch the game'. No one's aloud to watch the games! It's a Pro Tour!" Edgar laughs. "Sometimes journalists need to just go back to their qualifications and do their research, because a lot of the time, a lot of people will read a headline or a YouTube title and they don't even watch the video to see what the content is about. They'll make their opinion based on the title of the video and they don't even realize the context. Understand what you're writing about. I won't speak about anything I don't understand and if I do go to talk about a different topic, I'm going to research it to the hill so I look like I know what I'm on about. Because the worst thing is, what's going on right now, people talking about something they don't understand and that's where you get those sensationalised headlines."