GARY ANDERSON has called on darts players to “have fun” again after slamming the sport’s new stars as “boring”.
The Flying Scotsman, 54, beat Luke Woodhouse 10-5 in the first round at the World Matchplay on Sunday – but he was far from chipper in his post-match interview.
Anderson misses the ‘good old days’ of dartsGetty
Anderson alluded to Littler and the new darts stars not having the same ‘banter’ between them
Fresh off his victory, Anderson was asked by Darts Now if him being only the third seed to get through the tournament shows how much the sport has changed, given it used to be all the same faces reaching the latter stages before.
And the Scotsman took his opportunity to bring up the shift in darts in his response, even calling out younger players for “walking round with their bloody headphones in”.
He said: “I was sitting thinking the other day, having a talk with [Ian] White, [Adrian] Lewis, [Phil] Taylor, [Kevin] Painter, we used to sit and have a cracking laugh.
“Nowadays, I’d rather sit like this. Nobody talks to anybody. You don’t have a good laugh, you don’t have a bit of banter. You need to have a laugh.
“Doesn’t matter what you do in life, on a building site, office, you’ve always got to have a laugh. Nowadays, there’s not much of that going about.”
He continued: “The youngsters are boring. Absolutely boring.
“You talk to them, they’re too busy looking at their phone.
“They’re sitting on their phones with their bloody earphones in. Don’t talk to you. It’s a completely different life.”
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The 2015 and 2016 PDC World Championships winner is competing with Luke Littler and the other new wave of darts players at the World Matchplay Darts.
Littler, 18 – who narrowly missed out on a competition record over the weekend – has already earned a crazy amount of money since his rise to fame 18 months ago.
And while Anderson understands the new stars are making sure they reap the rewards of the rise of darts’ popularity, he still wants them to let loose now and again.
He said: “The youngsters, they’re here to do their job. They’ve realised they’ve got a great chance in life to make a lot of bloody money, buy their first house, then their second house.
“But they need to calm down and think: right, this is my job. That’s it.”
Anderson’s next opponent in the Matchplay will be either Ryan Joyce or Stephen Bunting. He faces the winner of their first-round match, which takes place on Tuesday.
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