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Published 11:18 31 Dec 2017 GMT
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"Nobody gets unanimous praise — ever. The best the timid can hope for is to be unnoticed. Criticism comes to those who stand out..." (Seth Godin)
"I'm not sure why people are whistling. We're watching one of the world's great PDC World Darts Championship semi-finals," Wayne Mardle said during commentary.No-one was in any doubt that what was unfolding at the oche was a little bit special but they also weren't in doubt of who they wanted to win.
"In commentary I called them stupid and I stick by it," the Sky Sports pundit doubled down after the game. "Yes they pay their money and they want a good time but respect the players. They aren't up there to be booed and shouted at."No-one is, Wayne, it just comes with the territory. It's not lost on Real Madrid fans how good Lionel Messi is but they boo him anyway and celebrate wildly the rare times he does slip up. Michael van Gerwen has been looking unstoppable, it's only natural that any neutral in the world would want to see him falter, want to know he's human even, never mind if he was competing against a home thrower. When you're at the level van Gerwen is at, people want to take a swipe at you and that's something you have to deal with. If the darts snobs would rather hush around the stadium for every throw as if it was a respectful rugby crowd tutting whenever someone so much as coughs during a placed kick, the best advice would be to stop allowing thousands to pour into the pub and drink 'til their heart's content. The irony is that Rod Harrington's quotes were so contradictory that they showed up the darts world as not being ready for superstars the size of van Gerwen and all the criticism and jealousy that follows.
"Booing is the only thing in the game I don't like," Harrington said on Sky Sports. Wait for it. "I can handle gamesmanship - we've all done it and we'll all take it and it'll happen again - but booing I don't particularly like."I can handle a player deliberately bending the rules to gain a direct advantage but I don't like when the crowd choose a favourite and a villain and they make a different sound with their mouths. That's Harrington paraphrased. By that definition pulled out of the darts pundit's arse, he'd rather see Lee Keegan throw a GPS tracker at a ball that was placed for the most decisive kick of the year than he'd like to hear boos come from one of the stands at Croke Park.
As it was, Dean Rock got both that day. The best sportspeople do and they get them in clutch circumstances too. To be the best though, they overcome it.
Michael van Gerwen is well able to block out those distractions in future. He's 28, he has two world championships already, he's winning everything there is to win in the last couple of years and he'll recover to get even better.
What will happen then of course is that he'll have even more people queuing up to see him fall and help an underdog rise against him. It's human nature and it's the byproduct of fulfilling your sporting dreams to this extent.
Darts folk are in cuckoo land if they think they are the ones who can stamp this out of sport with the success they've had letting the crowd off the leash.
It doesn't even need stamping out anyway.Football

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