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Abbey Road: our own fab four

John Lennon said Beethoven might roll over, but Barney certainly won't.

Sid Waddell
Quotes of the week

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Whyte & Mackay Premier League Darts heads to Liverpool for the biggest crowd the competition has ever seen.

Sky Sports commentator Sid Waddell will be here every week of the season in 2008 to share his thoughts on skysports.com. This week he's been preparing his Beatles puns as he gets ready to visit a city that loves its tungsten.

Sid on Wade v Mardle
Sid on Part v Lewis
Sid on Manley v Jenkins
Sid on Taylor v Van Barneveld

European capital of tungsten?

We had a very jolly time in Aberdeen. The crowd were on excellent form and I seem to have quite a big fan club because I got at least six marriage proposals from the nice young Scottish ladies.

A lot of people asked me who my favourite football team was and I obviously said Newcastle. But I was asked at least 10 times who my favourite footballer was and I said Denis Law, who is an Aberdeen lad. That made me popular with the locals.

Liverpool is the European Capital Culture and I can think of no more fitting place for the biggest ever night in the Premier Darts League with 8,000 people in the crowd.

Liverpool has always been a big city for darts. I remember filming a documentary in 1976 about a guy called Albie Brown, who won the all-Liverpool singles on crutches. He'd lean on one crutch with his right arm and throw with his left.

In the days of the Embassy World Championship in about 1984, my singing partner at the Lakeside was a guy called Jimmy McGovern, who was a big organiser on Merseyside. Me and him used to do an old Liverpool favourite called 'I'm Stepping Out'.

Eric Bristow was also very popular in that part of the world because he joined the Merseyside county team as a gesture after the Hillsborough disaster. They went round playing games for charity and raised a lot of money for the Hillsborough fund.

There was also a famous family called the Kennys, of whom the star was Kevin Kenny who got to the Embassy semi-final in 1991. So there will be a very large, vocal and knowledgeable crowd for this one. I can't wait!

James Wade v Wayne Mardle

Wayne Mardle is looking for his fifth straight win and there would be only one word to describe that achievement; Tayloresque!

Taylor's best run in this series is four wins on the trot, so Mardle has already matched that. If he goes one better he'll equal Taylor's record of five Premier League wins in a row, which he's achieved three times.

In 2005 he won five consecutive games up to and including the final, in 2006 he started the campaign with five wins and in 2007 we won each night from week three to week seven.

I don't think Mardle is going to equal that record because James Wade averaged 103 last week - and ominously he was still dissatisfied.

I spoke to him afterwards and he is showing much more of a Tayloresque attitude. He has now realised the importance of 100 per cent concentration in the Premier League.

The thing I like about Wade when he's concentrating is that he doesn't use lies and he doesn't bounce darts into the bed off other darts. It's a pure style and he's got a better eye than Taylor.

Now he's top and now he's realised the importance of concentration I think we'll see the real James Wade.

But I don't think Wayne will buckle, but I think Wade will win this 8-5. I think both men will average over 100 and I reckon it's going to be the game of the night.

John Part v Adrian Lewis

It shows you how good this tournament is when the world champion is sitting at the bottom of the table.

I still think the commuting to and from Canada is taking its toll on John Part. Furthermore, he's never been the world's best starter of a game. Even in his greatest game - the world championship final in 2003 - he had to come from behind to beat Taylor.

In a sudden death leg he can beat anybody in the world, but he you never see him dominating a match from the start.

Quite the opposite is true of Adrian Lewis, who is a real surge player. He starts very well and even though he was suffering the effects of illness he went 2-0 up on Taylor last week.

Adrian will be fitter than he was in Aberdeen. He only averaged 76 against Wade and threw just 12 ton-plus shots, but we'll see better from him in Liverpool.

Part won 8-6 when these two met in Nottingham, but I think we'll see a draw this time.

Peter Manley v Terry Jenkins

The match of the night in Aberdeen was the Peter Manley v Raymond van Barneveld clash.

Because he's now Cumbria-based, Manley had quite a lot of fans travelling up to watch him and his performance was absolutely magic. He's in the entertainment business and he showed what he can do.

Looking at the statistics, Peter Manley had 103 average and a 73 per cent checkout when he beat Phil Taylor, but last week he beat Barney with just a 90 average.

He won six out of the last eight legs and came back from 4-2 down. He's an entertainer and he always plays as if he's in an exhibition match.

He's perfect for this sort of game - kamikaze darts - and that's why the crowd don't boo him so much. However, I can imagine if there's 4,001 people booing him and 3,999 people cheering him in Liverpool, Manley will hear the boos.

The great thing about Jenkins is his big checkouts and at his best we see at least three 100-plus shutouts from him in every performance.

Manley is the draw specialist and I can see this going to the last leg. But while it will hover on the edge of a draw I think Jenks will just sneak it 8-6.

Phil Taylor v Raymond van Barneveld

John Lennon said Beethoven might roll over, but Barney certainly won't.

Saying that, I still think Taylor will win this match comfortably.

The big difference between Taylor and Barney is between the ears. The Dutchman has a weaker psyche - and I also think he and his manager Ed de Veer are getting a bit obsessed by minute details.

Before Aberdeen, they spent a quarter of an hour on the stage with a tape measure working out the distance to the board from the toes of the thrower.

Ed was making copious notes on this and I think Barney might be getting drowned in an ocean of stats instead of relaxing properly.

The third problem I can see with Barney is that he keeps throwing his third dart across to the five. Because he works across the 60 from right to left, he sometimes loses concentration when aiming for the left hand corner of the bed and he hits the five.

We saw half-a-dozen shots last week when he should have had 180s but he missed with the last dart.

In his first four matches of the season, Taylor averaged a miserable 95, but in his last five matches he has averaged 105, which is superb.

The one hope that Barney's got is that Taylor still hasn't got the weight of the dart perfect in the bottom third of the board. He's got to hope that Taylor will still be unsure on the double 16.

But I don't think he will be and I think Taylor will win 8-4 with a 106 average. I can see him sinking Barney like an Edam-coloured submarine!

The greatest sportsman?

We got plenty of e-mails last week after I said Phil Taylor should be seen as one of the greatest sportsmen.

Some of the comments said darts is not a physical sport, but take it from me that the build up of lactic acid in your arm during a two-and-a-quarter hour darts match is equivalent to shot-putting or pole vaulting over a couple of hours.

I remember filming a piece with the great Leighton Rees when he had to throw darts at a board mounted on a special camera with an unbreakable lens.

This was on January 5 1979 and he'd not thrown a dart since December 20. By the end of the two-hour shoot he was crying with pain in his right arm because he was in so much agony.

That's how physical darts is and that's why I think Taylor deserves to be up there with the likes of Babe Ruth.