I wouldn’t eat before TV games so trolls didn’t call me fat...
As queen of Alexandra Palace returns to the biggest stage, FALLON SHERROCK opens up on internet abuse
THE queen of that old palace on the hill is starting to feel excited. She is a little anxious, too, and for the most rotten of reasons, but we will come back to that.
First she wants to go to her happier thoughts, because Fallon Sherrock is returning to the place where it all got a little wild in 2019. She hasn’t been there since — not as a player or a tourist or a face for a sponsored gig. Nothing.
And so the next dates in her diary are special. December 15 to January 3. The World Championships, Alexandra Palace. It’s the scene of a pair of unprecedented wins that echoed all the way to Billie Jean King and Sarah Jessica Parker, drawing lenses and microphones from all corners of the planet.
‘It was just a bit mental, really, wasn’t it?’ she says, and who would argue?
She had started that tournament as a single mum and a former hairdresser and she ended it as a trailblazer with 100,000 new followers on Twitter. Two wins. That’s all there were. But no woman had beaten a man on that stage before and she took out Ted Evetts and Mensur Suljovic. What a brilliant noise it made.
Most wouldn’t remember that it was Peter Wright who won the whole thing, and fewer would recall Chris Dobey, who shut the music off at Sherrock’s party in the third round. But Sherrock? For a moment in time, we all knew her, and now she is back again, that relatable 27year-old from Milton Keynes.
‘I have been thinking about it over the past few weeks and I am buzzing to play there again,’ she says. ‘I didn’t qualify last year, but I’m so excited. I want to go a day or two before the start, just to get it out of my system. I think it could be quite overwhelming and I want to get those emotions out of the way, because it is a bit of a strange thing going back to a place where your life sort of changed.’
She still finds herself giggling when she talks about it, even if there was a sad side that we will come to.
‘It all happened so fast,’ she says. ‘One night I was playing my firstround match and then after about two hours’ sleep I was playing darts with Piers Morgan on Good Morning Britain. That isn’t normal.
‘After the tournament, all little things were different. I remember going in this club in Milton Keynes, Pink Punters, and showing my ID to the guy on the door. He was like, “You’re that darts player”, and suddenly they are putting us in this little VIP bit.
‘All I did was play darts on TV and people knew me — I was being messaged by Billie Jean King and Sarah Jessica Parker! I’m a girl from Milton Keynes and these big stars in America knew who I was. What is that about?’
At that point, Michael van Gerwen walks past in this hotel lobby in Wolverhampton and she doesn’t look twice. There was a time she couldn’t get her words out around him, a little star-struck by a three-time world champion; now they share a manager and in September she nearly beat him in the final of the Nordic Masters.
Doors opened after that run in 2019 and invitations were extended, which is why we’re chatting at the Grand Slam of Darts, the day after she hammered Mike de Decker 5-0 with a 101 average — the highest ever compiled on television by a female player. A day later she checked out with a 170 to reach the quarter-finals, the first woman to get that far.
So these are happy days indeed for a player who is breaking moulds. But that takes us to the other aspect of her story, which concerns the rougher patches she has experienced in the past two years.
While the world has had bigger issues to worry about than the rhythms of sporting careers, it was majorly unfortunate for Sherrock that the pandemic struck just as she was poised to build on her breakthrough act.
By her admission, she is a crowd player who finds more comfort on a big stage than in an empty room. That might explain why she has so far failed to get
a tour card via the grind of regular competitions, but was capable of pushing Van Gerwen to the brink in a big one and then excelled again last month at the Grand Slam of Darts.
‘I’d give myself 5.5 out of 10,’ she says of the past two years. ‘It has been quite tough to be honest. I worked so hard to do well at Ally Pally two years ago, and after that all those invitations to play came in, but then Covid hit and it was like starting from scratch.
It was demoralising.’ Tougher still has been the nasty actions of a faceless few online. Sherrock has long maintained that sexism has not been a factor in her dealings with male players, but on social media it has been relentless. It is why this return to Alexandra Palace could also bring some anxiety along with the attention.
‘I had some really horrible abuse after the last time,’ she says. ‘I had a bit a few years ago when I took medication for a kidney issue and my face swelled up for a televised game (in 2017), but it was far more after I competed at the Worlds.’
The picture she paints is horrendous and again begs the question of why social media platforms cannot do more to tackle abuse.
‘Some of it was pretty basic,’ she says. ‘“Why is she there? She isn’t good enough”. Then it would get more personal. They would take the mick about every little thing.
‘I don’t check it now because I couldn’t keep looking at it, but it was a few hundred a month. It would get worse if I went on TV — I’d feel anxiety about the way I look. I am not as bad now but I had to make sure I ate at lunchtime and not just prior (to playing) so I didn’t get people saying I look fat. I shouldn’t have to tolerate that.’
She shouldn’t. Time will tell if it resurfaces again, and likewise if she can repeat happier history in her performances at the Palace.
‘The abuse has got a little better since the final with Michael (Van Gerwen) but I know it’s there,’ she says. ‘I guess some people realised after that I am maybe not such a bad player after all.’
Maybe. But maybe they ought to have figured that out an awful lot sooner.
‘After winning on TV Billie Jean King and Sarah Jessica Parker messaged me’