Wednesday 16 June 2010 Press Release from Paul Gillings – www.inthemadhouse.com

In modern sport, coaches, players and administrators sometimes have to ‘think outside the box’ or defy conventional thinking to find a solution to either the opposition’s tactics or to change the way their own team plays to mask weaknesses or utilise their strengths. For example when Rory Delap launched his now trademark throw in, even the best coaches in the Premier League were baffled. Arsene Wenger, who is an intelligent man as well as a deep thinker of all things football failed with his original tactics to stop Delap and Stoke City from gaining an advantage from Delap`s ability to hurl a spherical projectile into the Arsenal penalty area. The solution for teams when playing at home anyway, had nothing to do with tactics, as such. They simply moved the advertising hoardings closer to the pitch and thus restricted Delap`s run up which in turn disrupted his routine.

This is actually a rather tenuous example by way of an introduction to the problem faced by Paul Gillings, who is a sports performance analyst and manager of Manchester based PDC professional Anthony Urmston-Toft. Urmston-Toft is competing in the PDC tour for the first time this year and unlike the competitors in most professional sports, dart players have to pay to compete in these events. In addition to that there are travel expenses and hotels to pay for too. It is very difficult to attract sponsors until you are successful and it is a real battle to become successful. All the tournaments are seeded, which means invariably that by the first or second round a player ranked in the top 36 in the World is the opposition. You could of course argue that to become one of the top players you need to consistently beat players already at that standard. On the other side of the coin is the argument that for a young player to build up confidence and to learn `how to win` then he needs to have a consistent run of matches to achieve this and to be able to enter as many competitions as possible. Any player contemplating entering the PDC would benefit from giving both these arguments some deep thought.

The other aspect of the fantastic global recognition darts has now attracted is partly through the PDC holding tournaments in European as well as worldwide destinations. For example there is a PDC tournament in Las Vegas in a few weeks time. Anthony Urmston-Toft needs £2000 just to cover flights, hotels and tournament entry fees. However, any winnings are added to his PDC ranking, and it is these rankings which determine which players qualify for the lucrative televised events as well as more fundamentally whether a player can earn a tour card for the PDC events next season. A number of sponsors were contacted but nobody could help, mainly the credit crunch and Anthony`s hitherto lack of fame were the main reasons for that.

The `Delap` moment arrived for Urmston-Toft and Gillings in the form of auction website ebay! Gillings explained: we couldn`t persuade one person to part with £2000 or two people to part with £1000 so we thought what about forty people coming up with £50? The dart player raffle was born. An ebay page has been created where you can purchase a set of Anthony`s custom made flights for £50. However, you are then given one prize draw raffle ticket for each set of flights that you purchase; a signed dart board, a private coaching session and an invite as Anthony`s guest to a PDC event are just some of the prizes. This gives darts fans an opportunity to make a dedicated young pro`s dream to play in Vegas come true as well as grabbing a great prize.