TWO-TIME world champion Adrian Lewis knew it was over when Mickey Mansell settled at the oche with two darts at his favourite double.
He’d only missed once in their match and sure enough when the ‘Clonoe Cyclone’ let fly left-handed, his arrow landed sweetly in the top bed.
Game, shot and match to the new PDC Players’ Champion from Tyrone who’d lost only 11 legs in the entire tournament, breaking Phil ‘the Power’ Taylor’s long-standing record of 13.
It was a moment to savour because Mansell had always felt he could compete with the best and now he’d proved it and not just in one match, but over a tournament.
Afterwards he put 10 grand in the bank to see him through the days when the doubles just refuse to go in. There are plenty of them in the world of professional darts where the competition is fierce, the margin between success and failure is slim as a tungsten tip and the action is relentless.
In the three previous tournaments before that win in 2018, Mickey had been dumped out in the first round each time without a penny to show for his efforts.
The first thing he thinks off now is putting bread on the table for his family but it wasn’t always like that.
Rewind the clock back 30 years or so to Girvan’s Social Club in Coalisland when Mickey chanced upon the sport after realising he was better at hitting trebles than he was at potting reds.
Dennis Taylor had started out in Girvan’s too, and after his nail-biting black-ball triumph over Steve Davis in the 1985 World Snooker Championship everybody, absolutely everybody, in the town was snooker-loopy.
Young lads flocked to Girvan’s and waited patiently for a game on one of the 19 busy tables but as his friends screwed their prized two-piece cues together, fumbled in the faux leather cases for cubes of chalk and crouched down determined to better their best breaks, Mansell’s attention was drawn to the dartboard and he soon discovered that, when he threw a dart, it landed where he’d aimed.
He played football too and was part of the Kevin McCabe-inspired Clonoe squad that won the Tyrone Championship in 1991. He took his boots with him when he emigrated to Philadelphia in 1995 and returned to action with the O’Rahilly’s when he came home five years later.
Darts remained a hobby and it was only when he retired from football aged 33 (he still lines out for the club’s over-40 side) that he began to put more time and effort into the game. Success in local competitions followed and victory in the Tom Kirby Memorial in Dublin earned him a wild card entry to the World Championships qualifiers in 2010.
After that taste of success he enrolled in Q-School (the qualifying tournament for the main Tour) and himself, Dave Chisnall and John Henderson emerged and they’ve been chasing 501 dreams ever since.
Far away from the one-hunnnnndred-annnd-eiiiiiighties, the fancy dress and the Ooi-Ooi-Ooi of London’s Ally Pally there is an unseen darting underworld in which men, and women, scrap it out against each other. Week-in, week-out the common purpose is to beat each other and reach the World Championships the next Christmas. Many, many sacrifices have to be made to get there.
“When I started I was leaving the wife and children at home and putting a lot on the line,” says Mickey.
“I would class it as glorified gambling – I was putting all my eggs in one basket to go to England and try to win money. Sometimes I felt like a dog chasing its tail.
“I was playing boys who hadn’t a care in the world. They had sponsors and I was rocking up to play thinking: ‘I need to win this game to get the 200 pound’ or ‘I need to win three games this weekend to cover expenses and get a wage out of this’.”
A joiner by trade, Mansell works at home from Monday until most Thursdays when (until the Covid-19 pandemic called a halt to darts) he packs his suitcase and travels with fellow player Brendan Dolan to compete in some of the 30 Players’ Championship events every year which are dotted around England. There are also European Tour events from Germany to Denmark and Holland to Gibraltar.
There are four events every weekend and the championship operates as a ranking system for the World Championships. Players get ranking points for the wins they achieve in each tournament.
“Winning is the priority,” Mickey explains.
“People say: ‘Ah, you’re away to England playing darts… sure it must be a great lifestyle, it must be great craic and all’. Yes, but it just becomes about winning and the enjoyment is winning because it takes the pressure off you and it justifies leaving everything back home.
“It becomes all about winning. People ask: ‘Do you enjoy it?’ But I’m not going there to enjoy it, it isn’t a bit of craic. I travel with Brendan and as soon as he lifts me at the house, it’s darts. We’re going to compete for money and that’s it.
“Sometimes people say that you have to enjoy sport but when there is money on the line the enjoyment is winning because you know the stresses that come with losing. When you have a bad weekend you have to go again the following week. There’s no coaches in darts, there’s nobody in the corner to pick you up; so you have to be your own psychologist as well.
“I’ve seen a lot of boys who have come on the Tour. They’ve been winning tournaments at home and come over all high and mighty of themselves but after a year they’re shattered, their confidence has gone. I know a couple of boys who won all the tournaments in Ireland and went over to England and quit after two years. Some boys just can’t hack it.”
Week and after week, tournament after tournament… It can be a hard slog when you’re constantly on the move and living out of a bag. The 128 players on the Tour see a lot of each other but it’s not like they are meeting up for a party every other weekend.
“Myself, Brendan Dolan, Willie O’Connor and Steve Lennon would usually sit together,” Mickey explains. “The Irish lads stick together, like the Spanish lads and the German lads… You’re travelling with those lads so you tend to know them better but you are in a competitive environment and you’re not really there to make friends.
“There’s a lot of things going on behind the scenes and whenever there is money at stake there are a lot of mind games going on. There’s security there if it gets out of hand but nobody wants to fall out because they know everybody will be back the next week and the week after and the week after…
“Me and Brendan travel together so we spend a lot of time in each other’s company. We room together and most years I spend around 25 weekends along with him.”
He adds with a chuckle: “He probably knows more about me than my wife does!”
There have been eight occasions when they’ve had to leave their friendship aside and Belcoo native Dolan is winning 6-2 at present. Both are very dangerous on their day and the top players in the world all know that.
Mickey has beaten global superstars like Van Gerwen and Barneveld, James Wade, current world champion Peter ‘Snakebite’ Wright and world number three Gerwyn Price in the past but he doesn’t arrive at tournaments with the same attitude, or expectations, they have.
“If I went three weekends – which thankfully I never have – and got no results then I’m out flights and accommodation, plus I’m going into the fourth weekend with no confidence so it becomes more and more difficult and you have to be able to pick yourself up,” he explains.
“We all can’t win. There’s 128 of us in the tournament, it starts at 12 o’clock and at half-12 there are 64 players out in the first round. That’s their day done so you have to be conscious of the standard you’re playing at and accept that sometimes it’s not going to go your way.
“I have won a Players’ Championship and I know I can beat the best players in the world but you have to dissect it and say: ‘Michael Van Gerwen is coming with a totally different attitude than I am’. He is beating everybody continuously whereas I’m looking at winning rounds to progress and seeing how the tournament develops.
“First of all I need to win a game to cover expenses. Then after a couple of wins you’re thinking: ‘Right, everything’s covered here’ and you’re looking at the draw and who you’re playing next.”
Mickey first came to nationwide attention when he played pre-tournament favourite Phil Taylor at the 2013 World Championships live on Sky Sports. The odds were stacked against him but he made a good start before losing 3-0. By 2018 he was an established Tour campaigner and was playing probably the best darts of his career.
He’d swept aside Price and Robert Thornton before toppling Lewis to win his Players’ Championship title and headed for the World Championships confident of giving a good account of himself. Things didn’t click at the Ally Pally though. They never have.
“I played very well that whole year in 2018,” he says.
“Everything went right and I was confident but I played terrible at the World Championships, I never performed at all and it put a whole dampener on the year.
“After that you’re into the whole psychology of it. You get four weeks’ off and you have to start all over again. The whole goal is to get to the World Championship – at the start of the year you’re aiming for the end of the year.
“My results have been very poor in it, it’s just not happening when I get to that stage. It’s an achievement getting there but I’ve been there and done that and now I want to progress a bit.
“People might see you playing at Christmas in the World Championship and, even though you have done so well to get there, they judge you by what they see and there’s no denying that but I have to look at what I have achieved and how I have performed to get to that stage.
“I try to keep on the positive side because there are thousands of players sitting at home who would love to get to the Ally Pally.”
This year had started well for Mickey. He’d had some good wins and been in decent form until the Coronavirus brought an at least temporary curtain down on the season - apart from a novel ‘Home Tour’ tournament in which players competed from their homes via video link.
During lockdown he’s been staying in shape. He was due to travel with the Clonoe Over-40s to play London Over-40s in April and the prospect of the game gave him a focus to get fit.
“We were all booked to go but it didn’t happen because of the Coronavirus,” he says.
“The only good thing was I started training to get fit for it and that has done no harm. I’m feeling a lot fitter – the lifestyle that darts players have wouldn’t be ideal with all the travelling and hotels and stuff. I’m always conscious of trying to do something and my two lads are into the football too so every other day we’re out running and we do some weights.
“I like playing darts but I don’t want to look like a dart player - although all that has changed a lot over the past five years.
“Some of the boys are still larger than life but when you’re out so many weekends and the tour is lasting so long you need a bit of stamina behind you. The younger lads that are coming through can see the advantages of having a level of fitness.”
He’ll throw dart after dart after dart to make sure he stays sharp and he knows that the other 127 players on the Tour and the hundreds who’d love to take their places will be doing the same.
“At the minute the levels are through the roof standard-wise,” he says.
“I’m putting as much practice in as anybody else because, if you don’t, you’ll be left behind.”
Consistency and maybe a little luck is all he needs, Dennis Taylor proved that…
