Received my copy of We Love Darts, the newest darts magazine on the market, it contains good reading, and brilliant photographs, the reports on both world championships where excellent, and very fair to both the PDC and the BDO, reporting should be unbiased, and We Love Darts has managed to keep to this.

Legend: Eric Bristow was very honest in his summing up of the Lakeside event, when he said "surely to god, with all the countries the BDO's affiliated with, they could have got 32 better players at the Lakeside" of course his statement was right, but I doubt very much the BDO could have assembled players of better quality from the overseas countries.

The PDC have taken the best from most of them, and to be honest a few that made Ally Pally, where no better than super league standard, the saving grace for Lakeside is the fact that not everyone has access to SKY TV, so they are under the impression that the players at Lakeside are indeed the best available, including Adams, and Hanky, everyone who know's anything about darts is aware of Phil Taylor, in fact almost everyone would quote his name if asked who is the best dart player today.

So while Eric's views are accepted by us one hundred percent, it is up to the BDO and maybe BBC TV to set the standard required to take part in a world championship, any athlete in America wanting to compete in the Olympics, must meet a set qualification, track events have time trials, field events have distences, the purpose is to have someone who can truly represent their country, with a chance of gaining a place in the Medals.

Is it not time that darts placed a qualifying average per dart on events like the world championships, after all if a players average for the year is only 25, the odd's are he will not sudenly find an extra 5 points once on the Lakeside, or Ally Pally stage, no, quite the opposite, it would be realisitc to have a required average of 27 per dart thrown, to gain qualification, of course I accept anyone can have a bad match, that will always happen in every sport, but to challenge for world honours, players need to be of a certain standard, and as Eric rightly said, Lakeside did not have many outside of the UK capable.

One article in We Love Darts, was a little sad, Wayne Mardle admitting after his 3-0 defeat to Jyhan Artut, that he was close to saying competition darts for him, may be over, going on to say "I don't want to be beaten any more - I'm sick and tired of it" that must have been very difficult from one of the game's great entertainers of modern times.

I hope that now Wayne has had time to reflect on his performance, or the lack of, that he will concentrate on rectifying the problem, recognise everything that made him good, go back to it, repreat it, and listen to himself, I remember the first time I met Wayne, it was at one of John Raby's Yarmouth events, wayne won both the open and the invite tournaments, his throwing was superb, his style,and character was cavalier, he seemed unworried if he won or lost, a showman without pretence, the sport needs the Wayne Mardle's, I truly wish him well.