Peter Manley

Peter Manley

Peter Manley played darts for around 30 years with the same set of old fashioned copper tungsten darts with the old style thread that is larger than is used nowadays. When he decided to have them weighed he discovered that all 3 barrels were a different weight. As he had joined team Unicorn they supplied him with new darts. Peter says of his old darts, “I bought them off a relative for £6 when I was a paper boy all those years ago! Changing darts has made a difference to him though, as he says, “My confidence has returned and my Unicorn 19gm nickel tungsten darts are feeling perfect.”

Manley believes that joining Team Unicorn was one of the best decisions that he has made and along with a change in image has led to greater success. He admits that for a while he had a bad boy image in darts and some of the darting crowds used to love to Boo him. He used to enjoy it but it got too personal and started upsetting his wife, Crissy, whom he married in 2004, so with her suggestion he adopted new walk on music for his tournaments. At the time of the change Peter Kay was number one in the charts with his version of Tony Christie’s, “Show me the way to Amarillo,” so he approached Sky and the tune was met with great approval from the audience in his home town in Cumbria when it was first used. Nowadays the audience go wild when they hear it. To go with his new image he is trying to lose up to 3 stones after finding that his match shirt was getting too tight and restricting his throwing arm.

Manley’s improved performance saw him win the biggest pay cheque of his life when he reached the 2006 Ladbrokes World Championship final. The £50,000 prize will be invested in his house in Carlisle where he now lives.

Peter has got to the final stages of many big competitions but his first really important win came 3 years ago at the Las Vegas Desert Classic and currently he is ranked no 5 in the PDC rankings.

Born in 1962 he is not as young as some on the circuit and is the highly-respected Chairman of the PDPA. (Professional Darts Players Association http://www.pdpa.co.uk ) The job means a lot of hard work, and as he says “I am the mouthpiece for the players and try to smooth out any problems, particularly at tournaments. It takes up all my time when I am back at home but I enjoy the job because darts is getting bigger and bigger as a sport.”

Peter Manley is also involved with BetFred and often makes personal appearances around the country in their betting shops, playing the punters, which he enjoys and trying to give them a good show .

Peters web-site can be found at the following link where he also runs an online darts shop, but be warned if you do not have broadband it takes a little while to load up.

http://www.petermanley.co.uk/home.htm