Our friends at Ace Odds recently sat down with former World Champion Michael Smith to talk all things darts, Ally Pally and more. Darts World even suggested questions:
Who are you the most excited to face if you could face anyone at the World Championships this year?
I just want to get there. If I’m playing Kevin Doets again, like I did last year, or I’m playing Noah-Lynn, it doesn’t matter. I just want to get there and get on the board now. I want to be in London. I want to feel like I’m in the tournament, because right now, being back home and just doing all the work, obviously, media stuff, and doing exhibitions. I’m practicing.
When I’m doing the school runs, it doesn’t feel like I’m actually in a World Championship. But when I’m in London, I don’t do media. I’m only practicing. I’m not doing school runs. I’m not doing anything and that’s when I feel like I’m in. And, yeah, I just want to be there. Whoever I face, I’m not fussed because I’ll be happy I’m in the tournament. I’m happy playing darts in front of some of the best fans in the world.
How does a darts player get through bad form and what’s your strategy?
Mine is just literally to keep practicing. It’s not changing anything, not doing more hours or less hours. It’s literally a bad patch. I keep going back to other sports, like when a striker’s out of form and not getting the goals, they can literally brace one game and get a goal in the second game and his confidence is back and he starts firing from outside the box and it’s not just tap-ins. It’s the same with darts. I just need the rub of the green. I need to win a few matches, 100 plus averages and it gets the head back. Because that’s the only thing that’s going wrong. It’s not your throw. Nothing’s changed with your throw. Nothing has changed with your darts, it’s literally what you’re thinking. You’re literally stepping up to the board thinking I might not hit this and the minute you think that, you’re not going to. It’s just little things, like sometimes you go through a spell of always losing the game 5-5 and getting beat 6-5, especially on the floor.
Then you could be 5-0 up in that game and then it goes 5-5 and then straight away you go, I don’t win these because I’ve lost the last ones 6-5. The minute you win a game, 6-5, and then you start winning again, 6-4, 6-3 the confidence is back then. The only thing that needs changing is just a little bit of luck and the little win.
How do you find it switching between the legs and sets?
I don’t mind it. Sets are obviously my favourite but even when I’m playing longer formats, we’re playing in sets anyway. The Match Play first rounds, first to 10, you’re only playing five legs before you have a break, and then you come back on for another five. You’re just playing mini-sets.
As long as you can win that set 3-2, you go into the break, not one nil, especially if it’s legs. You’re going in at 3-2, come back out and win the next mini set 3-2, and then you’re winning the match 6-4 then. As long as you keep that focus the same as playing in your own head, like mini sets and mini sessions and stuff like that, it works out perfectly. It doesn’t matter about any tournament. The only tournament it does matter with is the Grand Prix then, where you’ve got to start with a double, finish on the double, and everything else is just standard practice basically.
Darts fans have got some bad publicity recently from multiple players talking about the consistency of booing and whistling throughout games. What have you made of this?
Yeah, I’m not a fan of it. I was getting it early on this year, especially in the Premier League when you were playing [Luke] Littler early on. Everyone was getting the vibes from it. I was getting all the booing all the time, the whistling. Even when you’re on for a nine darter, there was whistling but you can’t monitor that. You can’t do much about it. You can only tell them, please stop. If they don’t want to, they don’t want to. That’s where people moan because they’re not picking the winners, but they’re certainly deciding it. Sometimes you could be running away with a match and then one person just gets here at the right time and then the next minute it’s on top of you, then they’re giving it to you every single time.
It’s hard saying it because it affects me as well, but you’ve just got to try not to let it affect you. You’ve just got to keep doing what you’re doing, playing the way you are. You’re playing in front of 3,000, 4,000 and then if it’s Premier League, you’re playing in front of 10, 000. You’ve just got to put it to the back of your mind and just virtually get on with it. It’s not nice having it because I wouldn’t go to someone’s office and start booing them while they’re typing on the laptop on the PC, or whatever they’re doing. But it’s one of them, it’s a sport and you’ve got to learn to deal with the negative as well as the positive.
What is the most hostile atmosphere or environment you’ve played in as a darts player?
I think it was my very first time in the Premier League. My first night was in Leeds. It didn’t go down well, obviously being a United fan and a St Helens fan. I had to play two games that night because Gary Anderson was sick, so I ended up playing Peter Wright and Adrian Lewis. I literally got all the way through ‘You Manc something’ and then ‘You St Helens something’, and I just got that for literally an hour and a half. It wasn’t nice. I would have been 26 or 27, so it was my first year of the Premier League, first night. I was like, if this is what it is, I don’t want it. It wasn’t nice, but then obviously it got better. Once I left the rugby places where they knew about it, it started to get easier.
What’s your favourite venue to play at?
One of them was the old Grand Slam when it was at the Civic Hall. That was one. It was tiny, but one of the best. I like the match play, because I don’t have to drive too far, I get to stay at home. It’s only a 35-minute drive. Probably, for me, the best one, especially with fans and stuff, is probably the O2, or the Mercedes Benz Arena, the one in Berlin. It’s virtually an identical venue, 12, 000 people, or whatever it is, 11, 000, all screaming and shouting. You can’t beat it.
What do you find the difference between the darts crowds here and when you go around Europe?
It’s mad because over here now at the minute, the Europeans are taking over. Most of the ticket sales for the Ally Pally are Germans. It’s hard to get tickets now. But it is a bit different, especially in Germany, Belgium, and Holland. They’re just mad on darts at the minute. Holland’s always been mad but I think the Belgian’s are now number one on ticket sales and then obviously you’ve got Germans as well, which we play eight times a year there. Yeah, they are crazy. They give everyone respect as well but especially if you’re playing one of the homeboys, one of the home nations, then it can get loud. It can get, not nasty, but you can get fiery as well on stage. But you get that in England, I’ll play Gerwyn at the Ally Pally and he gets all the stick for being Welsh. I play Gary or Peter Wright; they sing Scotland get battered. You get it everywhere. In sport, you’ve got your favorites and you’ve not, and it’s just the way you’ve got to deal with it then.
What are your thoughts on what MVG has done for the sport and do you think retiring is something he should consider giving his recent run of bad form?
What he’s done for the sport has been good, obviously after Phil [Taylor], we needed someone, I think the game needed, I didn’t need Michael [Van Gerwen] dominating me in most of the finals, but yeah, the sport needed someone like him, and he did deliver for a decade probably, from 2013 up until 22, wasn’t it? Just under a decade. It has been good and now it’s getting better where it’s getting more open. But we still need Michael. When he’s hinting at retirement, that’s just him being a muppet. It’s just him hinting and getting people to look at him. He won’t retire. Michael’s a year older than me, so he’s 35. He’ll be still here for another 10 years. I think 45. Because he is not a liar, Michael says things to the point. I think 45, as soon as he says he is retiring, he’s not thinking about it, he is going to, then he’ll just go.
The kid’s got enough money, he’s running the league, he’s won every single tournament, he won every tournament in one year. He’s got enough money where he can sit back, and relax, he’s got a nice family, built his own perfect house as well, he built it for himself. Yeah, fair play to him when he does.
Luke Humphries has had a lot of success this year, even though all the headlines have been on Luke Littler. Where does he rank for you in terms of the greats of this sport, how much potential does he have and how much more can he do?
He’s up there. I wouldn’t even put myself up there. I’ve not done as much as Luke’s won. I’ve been in more finals than Luke and stuff like that but to be classed as a great and the likes of Michael Van Gerwen, as he is now, when you’ve got both Luke’s last name and both Michael’s. With Van Gerwen, and obviously with Phil Taylor, what he did for so long, that’s when you’re classed as a great, obviously, Bristow. Put Gary Anderson up there as well as Barney as well. To be doing that, you’ve got to do it for a minimum of 5, 6, 7 years where you can dominate the sport. He is up there, he’s classed as a great, but I don’t think he’s one of the greats just yet. That belongs to Van Gerwen at the minute.
Who is your Mount Rushmore of darts players?
Phil Taylor’s number one, no one is taking that away from him. Michael Van Gerwen, two. Eric Bristow, three. And then I’m going to go Gary Anderson four, Adrian Lewis five. Because for me, I know Barney’s five-time, but he only ever won one in the PDC. There’s only Phil, Gary, and Adrian who’ve won back-to-back at Worlds, so there’s only three. Yeah, so that’d be the top five, I think. Phil, Michael, Bristow, Gary then Adrian.
Do you feel like you could get a 9 darter? How do you go about it? Is there a mental set to it or do you just have to go with the flow?
No, you can’t plan it. It happens. I think if you watch the stream the other day, they did the 9, the 147, the hole-in-one. They had two and a half hours to purposely hit it. Was it Michael or Luke when he went six darts into it? It doesn’t just happen. It happens in that moment. You can’t put your finger on it because you threw the same for the full match. It’s just for that reason, it’s gone in. You do want to hit them, but the most important thing is winning the match because for my nine-darter I didn’t get paid for it, but winning the match, I got the top prize then. It’s about winning. Everything else is second. If the nine’s get hit, they get hit, and a lot of people get paid this year in the crowd as well.
What’s your training regime ahead of any match or ahead of any tournament and championship? How does it work?
Mine is always the same. I’d never change. Even if I go from the Match Play to the Grand Prix, where you’ve got to start with a double instead of just finishing with it. I’ll do literally three hours at the pub, my mum and dad’s place, and then I’ll do all my stuff with the kids, like the rugby training and stuff, and then if I get home in time, I’ll go back to the pub then, so maybe eight o’clock, do another hour, two hours, and then it’s the same when I get to the venues to play.
I’ll be there four hours before. I’ll sit down for maybe 20 minutes. I’ll have, I don’t know what they call it, it’s like a little strawberry tablet I put into the water and it’s all the caffeine. I think it’s 50 milligrams or 150 milligrams of caffeine in the tablet and it’s just given you that boost right away because I don’t drink Red Bull or any fizzy drinks. That gives me a little bit of a fizz plus the caffeine and then I get up then for three hours. I won’t move from the board then. It’s literally hitting triple 20s. If I throw a bad dart, say I hit 5, I’ve got to try and recover it with a triple 19, then go straight to double 10. If I throw a bad dart into 18, say I’m in for 20, but I push it into 18 on purpose, and then I’ll go for a double 16 and the bull. It’s just trying to recover things in what would potentially happen in a match, especially under the nerves. You’re not always perfect, you’re always going to push a dart into the 5 or the 1, or unlucky sometimes that goes even further than that, it’s just about the recovery shots to the double. I won’t spend any time just solely throwing at doubles. My doubles only come in on the combination finishes when I’m throwing bad darts on purpose for recovery and finishing. That’s the only way I do it because I know in matches, I need to score before I can finish, so I’ll never practice the finishing but I’ll practice recovering because I won’t always hit 180s or 140s.
Sometimes I’ll hit a big five and then I’ve got to recover an 85 or an 81 and it starts to get complicated. But I’ve been pro now for 17 years. It’s something I’ve done from day one and it seems to work and sometimes it doesn’t. That’s why we love this game.
You famously hit a nine-darter during a World Championship Final, what did that feel like that?
It was unreal, especially when he missed the double 12. It was one of those moments. It was special. Seeing all the pints, the drink, going everywhere, everyone was soaked. I must have watched that 100,000 times, probably even more. Might have been 100,000 that times that night at the hotel. At that moment I didn’t feel about it like I feel about it now. That was only the second set to make it 1-1, so it wasn’t a massive moment. It was massive for the fans but not for us as players. But when I went on to win the set and then the match, it felt weird. I got back to the room and got the goosebumps, but I never got them on stage, only when the match had finished. I was smiling from ear to ear, and that did virtually for a full year. I know there was nine-darters hit that year, but nobody is going hit one like that ever again!
—–ENDS—–
Images: PDC
