Blood on Muswell Hill
Posted on August 8th, 2011
Oliver Albert Croft OBE formed the British Darts Organisation on January 7th 1973. During the next four decades he ruled British darts from Muswell Hill with an iron fist. Uncompromising, pioneering, and despotic, it is worth remembering that the BDO itself was a breakaway from the National Darts Association of Great Britain. Olly was once a rebel himself.
On August 7th 2011, precisely 38 years and 7 months after the inception of the BDO, Olly Croft was booted off the board he founded in a ruthless but long-overdue coup by his member counties. A man who once said “I don’t owe any darts player a living” now finds himself out of work.
One side of the tungsten curtain holds Olly Croft up as a standard bearer for darts, rightly stating that the sport would not be where it is today were it not for Olly’s efforts over four decades. He helped drag darts out of the pubs and onto prime time television, turning working men who throw arrers into household names.
The other side of the curtain readily grant this indisputable fact but counter that darts would now be in a much healthier condition if Olly Croft had relinquished his grip some years ago.
Given the parlous state of relations with the BBC, and the dwindling attraction of BDO darts as a sporting spectacle, this point is also difficult to refute. The world has changed, the landscape of darts has changed, but Olly and his friends have not.
Tags: BDO, Darts Split, Martin Adams, Olly Croft, PDC
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