About The League

The Rugeley & District Monday Night Darts League was founded some 30 years or so ago. A few years ago it fell into decline and stopped operating for a couple of years, but Graham Jellyman, the Landlord of The Castle, in Brereton, Rugeley, resurrected it and has taken control for the last 6 years. He is the Treasurer and Secretary of the league. Will Hall is the Chairman and he presides over a small committee consisting of, myself, Alan Hartley Web Master, John Gartshore, George Hylton, Paul Williams, Geof Taylor, Steve Culley and Phil Mason. Over the years the format for matches has changed considerably and at the moment a match consists of 6 singles games of 301, best of 3 legs and two doubles games of 501, best of 3 legs making a total of 8 games or a potential of 24 legs per match. Last year a nomination start rule was been introduced instead of just any double to start a game as is normal in 301 leagues. At the end of every match the two Captains play each other for their place in the Captains League that runs throughout the season alongside the normal league.

The standard at the top of the league can be quite high and as it is a money league it attracts some good local players. Because it is quite a long league, a Shadow League also runs from the halfway point, for the lower teams to play for to give them some incentive to play the last few games when they have no chance of winning the league. The league only includes pubs and clubs in the Rugeley and district area, that is Rugeley, Brereton, Handsacre and Armitage so there is very little traveling to get to matches.

The new Web-Site.

Just before Xmas 2005/06 I asked Graham if he would like a web-site setting up for the Rugeley Darts League. He liked the idea if it was going to be free, so I used the free web-site that my Tiscali internet service provider gave me and created a web-site for the league as I had done previously for the Weston & Trent Valley League. The web-site is very small at the moment but gets added to as often as I can. There is a little problem at the moment in being able to keep the league tables updated but we are trying to resolve this. The site has links to other darts leagues and things of interest to players. A news page with articles about the leagues events and some matches as well as news from the world of darts in general is included in this site. Fixtures, League Tables, Rules and a Web Links page can also be found. I am experimenting with adverts with a view to raising money from them in the future for the league. Search engines such as Google have picked up the site but any links we can get will help promote the site enormously. If anybody has any articles to be included or has any suggestions for additions please feel free to contact me, Alan Hartley.  superdart@tiscali.co.uk

Presentation Summer 05

Phil Taylor presented the prizes for the Men’s Rugeley & District Monday Night Darts League this Monday 18/7/05 to a packed house at the Castle in Rugeley. As everybody hoped he took on challengers afterwards, one player from each team in the league. It is common practice for the superstar to give his opponent the start but Phil was having none of that and made everyone bull up. Someone said maybe he was not feeling very confident after one of the challengers beat him last year!!!!

The games were not all of a standard that we have come to expect from the worlds greatest darts player but as he said he plays better under a little pressure and only a couple of his challengers managed to do that.

In the first game Phil did not score less than 100 a throw finishing with a 121 but although he hit his first 180 of the night in the second game the general scoring was poor by Phil’s standards. He missed the 40 finish and took another 15 darts to get the double. Phil had a couple of slow games till a player from the Swan stepped up and started with a ton so Phil stepped up a gear and dropped in another 180. He also had a brilliant game against someone from Brereton Town Football Club hitting two 180’s, a 140 and finishing 701 in about 16 darts.

In the last game against the Globe Phil was well in front as usual but he messed up his finish and had I don’t know how many darts at a double giving his opponent plenty of time to come down and even have a couple of shots at a double. By this time Phil had started to mess about to give him a chance but he got fed up in the end and finished on double 1.

There were a couple of games that Phil played well in but did not overwhelm his challenger and those were against young Simon Ward of the British Legion (The team I play for) and John Brindley. They both excelled themselves but were simply outclassed. As you might expect nobody beat Phil Taylor on the night and afterwards he gave a few minutes chat and answered some questions. During this time he stated that in the last 6 months or so he had won about 300 thousand pounds in prize money. In his words there never was a better time to be playing darts!!!