The velvet rope was raised. The names were read. The lights flickered on each of the 2026 Premier League selections. And once again, James Wade was left standing outside, suit pressed, résumé immaculate, invitation conspicuously absent. “Sorry mate, not tonight”
This time, though, The Machine didn’t shrug and move on in silence. He spoke. And when Wade speaks, it tends to carry the clipped precision of a man who has spent two decades dealing exclusively in facts, figures and finals.
On X, the Aldershot Ace laid his cards on the table, unfiltered and unmistakably wounded:
“Hard work pays off… really? Disappointed, but proud of the work I put in this year chasing one goal getting back to the Premier League. Missing out hurts, but that’s part of the journey. I trusted my performances in the big moments, two major finals and two major quarter-finals and I’ll keep backing that process. Back to work now. 2026, I’ll be ready.”
There it is. No tantrum. No theatrics. Just a cold, steel-edged frustration from a man who genuinely believed the numbers would speak loudly enough. And on the surface, they do. Two major TV finals – the UK Open and the World Matchplay. Quarter-final runs at the European Championship and Players Championship Finals. Add in four Euro Tour semi-finals for good measure and you’re staring at a season most players would frame and hang above the mantelpiece. For a 42-year-old with more mileage than most of the field combined, it was a campaign of remarkable durability.
But here’s where Premier League arithmetic becomes cruelly unforgiving. For all those deep runs, all that consistency, all that relevance, there was just one thing missing from Wade’s 2025 ledger: silverware of the televised kind. One solitary Pro Tour title in Leicester. That’s it. No major crown. No TV moment where the confetti fell for him. And that, brutal as it sounds, is where the argument fractures. Because if Wade believes he deserved a seat at the table, logic dictates someone else should have been asked to stand up. Realistically, that conversation circles around one name more than any other: Stephen Bunting.
The Bullet has taken the early flak. Social media sharpened its knives. Yet Bunting finished the season with six titles. Six. The same number as Gerwyn Price, another player some deemed fortunate to get the nod. Titles matter. They always have. History doesn’t keep footnotes for runners-up, no matter how heroic the effort.
Wade’s case, then, rests almost entirely on consistency over conquest. A strong argument – but one that rarely wins in Premier League selection rooms where spectacle, trophies and headline moments carry gravitational pull.
The truth is painfully simple. Had Wade turned one of those finals into a victory – just one – this conversation likely never happens. Lift the UK Open or surely the Matchplay and the door swings open? Finish second twice, and suddenly excellence feels insufficient.
—–ENDS—–
Images: PDC
