On December 29, 2023, Gary Anderson sat in front of the assembled darts media and delivered one of the clearest warnings a senior professional has ever given about the treatment of a young athlete. The sport responded by doing the precise opposite of everything he recommended.
His words were direct: “We had another youngster called Josh Rock that all you press destroyed. Let the boy play darts. He’s 16 years old.” He described the cameras, the Zoom calls, the Sky interviews piling onto a teenager in the middle of a World Championship. He named the pattern of hyping young players and grinding them down. He pointed at the list of promising youth players nobody could find anymore.
What happened in the two years that followed: a £20 million sponsorship deal, sixteen weeks of Premier League roadshows, back-to-back world titles, three consecutive first-round major exits in the middle of it all, a darts case thrown on the floor, a social media post announcing he wouldn’t return to Germany, and a teenager describing the media attention as getting “a bit too much” — while his sport called it the price of success.
Anderson was right about the pressure. He was right about Josh Rock. He was right about the pattern. What he got wrong was the outcome — because Littler’s talent was extraordinary enough to survive the circumstances the sport created for him. And that’s what makes the story harder, not easier, to sit with.
RIGHT NOTICE: The Copyright Laws of the United States recognize a “fair use” of copyrighted content. Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act states: “Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.” This video and our YouTube channel, in general, may contain certain copyrighted works that were not specifically authorized to be used by the copyright holder(s), but which we believe in good faith are protected by federal law and the fair use doctrine for one or more of the reasons noted above. Fair Dealing: Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988 (UK) section 30 states “Fair dealing” with a work for the purposes of criticism or review, of that or another work, does not infringe any copyright in the work provided that it is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement. Copyright in a work is not infringed by the use of a quotation from the work (whether for criticism or review or otherwise).———————————————————————————————————————–
Contact:
[amazon_auto_links id="551"]