Anyone who watched the World Championship at Alexandra Palace last Christmas will have heard The Cranberries at some point over the three weeks. Zombie is the walk-on music for William O’Connor, the Cappamore man who has been on the professional circuit since 2011 and who threw the highest average of the entire first round on his way past Poland’s Krzysztof Kciuk.
He went out to Michael van Gerwen in the second, which is no disgrace. Seven players from this island were at the Ally Pally that fortnight, in a field that had been expanded to 128 for the first time and carried a million pounds for the winner.
That winner, inevitably, was Luke Littler. He has since added the World Masters, the UK Open, the Premier League and the World Matchplay, and he became the first player in the sport’s history to pass three million pounds in career earnings before his twentieth birthday. It has made the darts betting markets at bookies like Boylesports a fairly repetitive read this season, because there is only so much value in backing a man who keeps winning. The more interesting money has been on everything happening behind him, and there has been plenty of that.
O’Connor’s season
The Limerick man turned 40 in July and is having one of the better years of his career. He reached the final of Players Championship 20 in June, losing 8-5 to Ross Smith, and made his World Matchplay debut at Blackpool a month later. Ryan Searle beat him 10-6 in the first round, but getting to the Winter Gardens at all requires a top-32 finish on one of two rankings lists, and O’Connor had never managed it before.
He sits around fortieth in the world. For a man who has spent fifteen years grinding out floor tournaments in leisure centres across England, that is a decent place to be.
Rock keeps climbing
The best player on the island is Josh Rock, from Broughshane in County Antrim, now ranked eighth in the world at twenty-five. He and Daryl Gurney won the World Cup for Northern Ireland in 2025. This year he made the semi-finals of the UK Open and finished eighth in the Premier League, which is a full season of Thursday nights against the best eight players alive.
Rock has not won a televised major yet. Most people who watch a lot of darts think that is a matter of time rather than ability.
The autumn schedule
The World Grand Prix comes first, running from the end of September into early October. It is the odd one out on the calendar because every leg has to be started on a double as well as finished on one, which turns the whole thing into a lottery and regularly embarrasses the seeds. Older readers will remember when it was held at the Citywest in Dublin every October, which it was for the best part of two decades before it moved across the water.
The Grand Slam follows in November and the World Championship starts again in December. Sky Sports has the full calendar and results for the season if you want to plan your winter around it.
Closer to home
None of this is why most people in north Cork or west Waterford pick up a set of darts, of course. The local leagues start back around the same time the Grand Prix does, and the standard in a lot of parish halls around here is higher than people outside the game would guess.
It is one of the few sports left where the gap between the pub board and the televised stage is a matter of degree rather than kind. Same board, same distance, same double sixteen. O’Connor was throwing in Cappamore long before he was throwing at Ally Pally.
Sport around the region has had a good summer of it. The Friday Nights Racing Series at Mallow wrapped up earlier this month in fine form, and the camogie homecoming on the Grand Parade drew thousands. Darts will not fill a city centre. It will fill a fair few sitting rooms between now and January, though, and there will be a Limerick accent somewhere in the coverage.
