Last month, three World Series tournaments took place in Australia and New Zealand. Paul Nicholson, himself a former professional darts player, takes stock of Oceanic darts.
Nicholson believes that ranking action should take place in the country and that players should be given the further vehicle for progression and rewarded for sacrifice.
“When you think of feeder systems in the PDC, none of them have done as much as the DPA and DPNZ. Dart Players Australia and their Kiwi counterparts have been sending players to the ProTour and World Championships for two decades or more,” said Nicholson.
“Just think about that when you think of the growth of the game since we came to Ally pally for the first World Championship there in 2008.
“The talent pool in Australia and New Zealand has always been strong and it was shown again with the talents of Gordon Mathers, the winner of the Kyle Anderson award, World Cup winners Simon Whitlock and Damon Heta, and the qualifiers like Mal Cuming, Dave Marland, Haupai Puha and Warren Parry.
“We do now look to the future of those countries though and we wonder where the next stars will come from. It is time for the next batch to come off a very seasoned conveyor belt, and for that to happen I think we need to entice more into the sacrifice for success.
“That sacrifice has been shown to work by myself, Whitlock, Anderson and Heta. I think the way to do that is to somehow get ranking action back down there, and we take the tour stars all over there. We did it before in 2008, 2009 and 2010. I think we could see an effect from that.
“The players are there, we just need to give them the vehicle to vault themselves into action and one stage game may not be it, but a number of ranked events could see a different outcome.
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