Philippine Darts : A personal view

By now, the darting world must have already took notice of Pinoy Darters. We've dominated Asian darts circuit for several years now but we have yet to produce a world Champion. This may be far-fetched but I know many of you agree with me on this. Those who have personally witnessed the talents of our fellow Pinoy darters would surely agree that soon we will have an Efren 'Bata' Reyes or a Manny Pacquiao in darts. It may not be so soon but who knows?
With this, let me give my insights on the building blocks to achieve this far-fetched goal. Of course, many would say, that practice is the key. Sure, hell! Practice is the main key! But I've already seen Pinoy darters with world-class skills. Maybe not at par with a Phil Taylor as yet but for sure they can put up a tough game versus those top notch darters. Lourence Ilagan almost did it! Ian Perez And Boy Gionzon and some others were almost there. But what really are the things that we need to have/do to improve our performance at international level? There are several things in my mind so please bear with me as I go through each of them. First, as I’ve cited in my older post, is the lack of funding for this sport. We can’t expect our Government to give this as we have more popular sports in the same predicament. So where can we expect the support then? This is where the local darts organization and sponsors come in. In this area, I commend NDFP (National Darts Federation of the Philippines) for their constant support to our Pinoy Darters. Then again this organizing body can only do so much, understandably. They also need sponsors to serve us better. Sending our top darters abroad is no joke let alone the sky-rocketing cost of airfares. So we need to improve to attract more sponsors minus the unscrupulous managers! Yes, some managers are horrible but I won’t dwell on that here (let me tackle that in another post ). That’s our fundamental issue. How do we now attract sponsors then? First, I think we need to have a central repository of darters statistics. NDFP has been tracking darters’ national rankings but needs to add darters’ game statistics to beef-up their database. I mean, statistics is statistics! Many would argue that some factors (e.g. quality of opponents, crowd/environment) have to be injected for the stats to be comparable to that of PDC or BDO for that matter. But that’s impossible! Not all darters are lucky enough to join and be seen in the international events so game statistics is the way to go! At least, they will now have a gauge of our darters’ skill sets.
The second point that I wanted to raise is the need to grow the darts market. Sponsors would surely get local signature players if they have a huge local market. You must be wondering why most of the American darters are signature players. I’m using American darters as comparison because I strongly believe that we can fairly compete with them (See my Shanghai International Darts Championship entry). Darts is growing in Asia, yes. NDFP is capitalizing on this – they are in the right track as far as promulgating darts as a sport in our country is concerned. Grassroots is the key! This is the very reason why NDFP is reaching out to Barangay level to promote darts. Lastly, we need to be united as darters! Those unscrupulous and self-serving individuals do not have a place in Philippines’ darts scene. They thrive because we feed their arrogance and personal agenda! Take a stand Darterong Pinoy! Mabuhay tayong lahat!