London Journal; The Pub's Still a Fixture, but What About Darts?

For most of the 1980's, the Sydney Arms was a magnet for the best and brashest of London's dart set, young men who came to prove they could hold their beer and still pitch a needle-tipped tungsten shaft with close to the accuracy of a laser-guided missile.

But these days, when Roger Nickson surveys an evening's crowd inside his south London pub, mostly middle-aged men and women pinching their darts like dead herring and squinting in the smoky air, he shakes his head and wonders aloud about the future of the game.

"Where are all the good young ones, where are the teen-agers who used to come here?" asked Mr. Nickson, who not only runs the Sydney Arms but is also one of London's top darts trainers. "Why have the young people gone away from darts?" Passion Is Fading

All across Britain, in pubs and private parlors, the lament is the same: Darts, the game that has seemed an all-consuming English passion, the next closest thing -- after the Anglican Church -- to a national religion, appears to be on the wane.

Membership in national youth leagues has dropped by more than 50 percent in the last two years, and televised broadcasts of darts competitions, a staple of late-night British sports programming in the early 1980's, have gone from 14 tournaments a year down to just 3.

"The English are still the best in the world at darts, and that's some comfort," Mr. Nickson said. "But we are losing the future, because the people playing today are basically the same people who were playing 10 years ago."

It is the matter of television, in particular, that worries the masters of the game. Olly Croft, the founder and chief executive of the British Darts Organization, says that television is not only essential if darts is going to maintain strong national visibility, but that it is also the single most important source of income. No Money, No Incentive

"Without the television, the sponsors back out, and that means the purses get smaller," said Mr. Croft, a sad-faced man with mutton-chop sideburns who has devoted the last 30 years of his life to the game. "And without the big money, the young players just don't have the incentive to get into the game."

After the heady 1980's, when purses soared and interest in the game seemed at an all-time peak, it is not entirely clear what went wrong, causing darts to take such a sudden tumble.

As Mr. Nickson might say, there are as many different theories as there are pints of beer. But the theories are more difficult to swallow.

Image, for one thing. Darts is mostly a working-class pastime, played in pubs by people who, quite often, like to smoke cigarettes and drink beer.

It does not have the kind of upscale demographics favored by television producers and commercial sponsors, trying to figure out how to allot precious prime-time hours.

"The truth is, we tried to polish up our image, and make the game more appealing to families, to kids," Mr. Croft said, recalling an edict by the British Darts Organization in 1987, which forbade competitors from smoking or drinking on television. A Hard Image to Shed

Still, it is a hard image to shed. One of the most enduring memories of darts competition among British viewers was the moment a few years ago when Jocky Wilson, a two-time world champion, toppled off a stage at a tournament.

"I know they said Jockey had too much to drink but it just weren't true," Mr. Croft said. "He's a big man and he lost his balance."

The recession in Britain has hurt, too, by cutting into the disposable income of the everyday players, meaning they have had to throttle back on their pub time.

"Most times, a fellow will come in and have six or seven pints for an evening," said Mr. Nickson, which can run up a tab of $12 to $15. "With people out of work now, you can't afford to play the darts you used to."

Police crackdowns on drivers who drink has had an effect too, making it more complicated for darts teams to travel across town for a tournament in a rival pub. "You can't have all the beer you used to," Mr. Nickson said. "Someone has to drive you back."

And then there are all the new fads and gewgaws that pubs and pub owners use to whip up business, by taking down their dart boards and putting in video games or pool tables or experimenting with karaoke, the Japanese import where patrons sing along with pre-recorded background music.

By most estimates, Britain's dart playing population hovers at around 7 million, including about 2 million who compete in organized league play.

Even with the falloff in television and youth leagues, it remains a multi-million-dollar business, supporting a cottage industry that manufactures team shirts, trophies, pennants, key chains, hats and custom-made darts.

Moreover, there are a dozen or so players who continue to make six-figure incomes off exhibitions and tournaments, superstars like Eric Bristow, who is nicknamed the Crafty Cockney and whose distinctive throwing style -- right pinky raised, in the manner of an effete tea drinker -- has been mimicked by a whole generation of admiring young darts throwers.

Nowadays, even some of the best young ones, players like 23-year-old Graham Miller, are loathe to go professional, because they just don't see the kind of money to keep it full time. Mr. Miller, for example, plays league darts, but continues to keep his job spray-painting automobiles.

Mr. Nickson, like others, can't understand why television has turned its back on the game. "It's exciting, it's cheap to produce, it's colorful and it never gets postponed on account of rain," Mr. Nickson said.

At the same time, he worries that darts playing may have hurt itself, by trying too hard to re-invent itself as a squeaky clean television sport.

"There's a saying we ought never to forget," Mr. Nickson said. "You can take the darts out of the pub, but you can never take the pub out of darts." (Story Source)