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Phil Taylor recalls what he told Barry Hearn before the first-ever Premier League season which was held 20 years ago in far more modest venues than we see today
Phil Taylor didn’t get a lot wrong during his darts career – but he missed the board completely with his prediction before the first-ever Premier League season.
It’s 20 years since the annual darting roadshow was launched, with its maiden night taking place at the King’s Hall in Taylor’s home city of Stoke-on-Trent on January 20, 2005. The venues back then were more modest, think large theatres rather than the massive arenas we see today.
The tournament didn’t even set foot outside of England, with nights in places like Carlisle, Doncaster, Widnes and Kidderminster. Taylor, who was at the peak of his powers, wasn’t convinced it would take off and told his manager and PDC boss, Barry Hearn, of his doubts.
“When Barry told me the idea, I said, ‘you’ve got no chance, Bazza,” he recalls. “I said, ‘I think you’re mad’. But he was like, ‘no, I’ll get it going’. I said I’d play in it, but I wasn’t sure we’d fill arenas.
“I didn’t think it would be as big as it became. I played Barney [Raymond van Barneveld] at the Sheffield and there were something like 16,000 people in there! I was like, ‘wow, it’s like a football competition.
“I said to Robbie [Taylor is friends with Robbie Williams], ‘when you played at Knebworth in front of 150,000, the Premier League was like that for me’. You turn round, see the crowd and think, ‘wow, it can’t get any better than this!”
Taylor won 16 World Championships and the same number of World Matchplay titles. But his six Premier League crowns are well up there in his long list of achievements.
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“The Premier League, to me, is the hardest one,” insists Taylor, who won the first four editions of the tournament.
“With the World Championship, you’ve only got to be good for a couple of weeks. With the Premier League, you’ve got to be good for 17 weeks now.
“For four months, you’ve got to be on top form, otherwise you won’t qualify for the finals. Then when you get to finals night, you’ve got to win it. You’ve got to be spot on.
“[Snooker legend] Steve Davies always said to me, ‘you’ve got to be good all the time and brilliant when you have to be’, and that was my motto when I went out there.”