The Darts World Years 2001: Blood On The Carpet......

By CJ Harris-Hulme 29/07/2020

Perhaps one of the most important moments in darts arrived in the same year as the infamous 'Darts Wives' documentary. However, Blood on the Carpet: The Split In Darts was produced as part of a long-running series of popular and professional documentaries detailing the troubles, battles, and splits in business and other areas. As such it carried weight and the BDO was not happy with how their organisation was portrayed.

The quotes in the piece (above) show just how upset Olly Croft and others were at their portrayal. With the benefit of hindsight it could be argued that they were simply angry at the entire saga, and their roles in it, being laid bare to a wider audience.

It is impossible to watch the program now without seeing how it must have looked to the average fan at the time. All the sympathetic, popular, and well-known characters were seemingly poorly treated, by the BDO, with the PDC appearing as plucky battlers on behalf of players and their livelihoods.

Eric Bristow detailed the behaviour of Olly in excruciating detail, Tommy Cox came across as a tough but fair guy and all in all the BDO looked backward, mean spirited, and on the losing side.

Although Justice Potts' Thomlin order, of 1997, had settled the split, and the intervening four years had shown the PDC to be the more successful model, it may have been this documentary that shifted general opinion, and much sympathy, toward those who had sniffily been termed 'the professionals' many years before.

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