Pirates are on board as league newcomers
Paisley and District season gets going with first matches
The new season got under way for the Paisley and District darts players this week with the first league games of the season taking place.
There are now 24 teams in the league with each division containing 12 teams.
Aiming to stay top of the pile in the First Division are Hagg Bar A who started their campaign with an impressive 8-1 win over Keystone A, winning the singles by 6-0 with the loss of only two legs before Keystone got themselves on the scoresheet in the doubles.
But this score doesn’t give the Hagg team top spot as Flying Horse A went one better and recorded a whitewash 9- 0 result against their Barrhead neighbours from the Arthurlie Inns, including a great 127 finish from Martin Brophy.
St Peter’s kept up the heat on the leaders as they too recorded a first game victory after beating Burgh Bar 6- 3, while Pickwicks showed their ambitions with the same result against division newcomers, Gleniffer Hotel.
Court Bar travelled to Hagg Bar C determined to turn round results that had gone against them last season and after a very tense game they did just that with a hard-fought 5-4 win, going all the way to the last leg of the doubles before securing the victory.
And in the last game of the division Railway Inn took the honours from the other newcomers, last year’s Second Division champions Pockets Red as they ran out 5-4 victors.
In the Second Division there were a lot of new faces as teams from Kelburne Cricket Club, Court Bar B, Hazel Pirates and Hazel Pirates B have all joined the league since last year.
However, it is an established team that lead the table as The Kelburn beat newcomers Hazel Pirates B by a 7-2 margin to take top place ahead of Court Bar B who started off their matches in the league with a very credible 6-3 win over Keystone B.
Cafuffals, who just lost out on promotion last year, are one of four teams who share third spot as they all won their matches 5-4.
They won their match by the slender margin against new boys Hazel Pirates while Inkerman took the points from Pockets Black, Tartan Rose beat Flying Horse B and The Hazel Arms make up the foursome after beating Kelburne Cricket Club.
With the established teams taking the points from the new teams after such tight scorelines it shows that the Second Division is going to be a close run race again this year.
There were 17 maximums recorded in the games played on Monday with Garry Jardine of Railway Inn leading the high scoring with two of them while Hagg Bar A and St Peter’s had three players each hitting maximum scores.
There were 20 games finished in 18 darts or less with the pick of these being a 13 dart leg from Hagg Bar A’s John Murdoch.
He was not the only player from the team to win in six throws or less though as every player in the singles had at least one leg recorded as a highlight.
The highest finish of the eight checkouts over 100 went to Pockets Red player Alan Smith who finished his game on 128.
There was one player featuring in all three highlights for the first week – Dean Fitch hit a maximum, won two of his singles games in six throws and finished one of them with a 101 checkout.
This year the teams will alternate between league and cup games on a weekly basis so next week they play the prelim round of the P&D League Cup with games taking place between Hazel Arms and Court Bar, Kelburne Cricket Club and Railway Inn, Flying Horse A and Burgh Bar, Gleniffer Hotel and Tartan Rose, St Peter’s and Cafuffals, Hagg Bar A and The Kelburn, Keystone A and Inkerman BC and Hagg Bar C and Court Bar B.