One of the early heart-warming stories of this year’s World Darts Championship has been provided by Alan Soutar, who has won both matches so far to reach the third round.
In the Saturday afternoon session, the Scot won 3-0 against Daryl Gurney, who became the first seeded player to be knocked out of this year’s tournament. That followed Soutar’s comfortable victory over Australian Mal Cuming in round one. Soutar, who only made his Ally Pally debut last year, is a relative newcomer to the sport’s top table and has a lot going on away from the oche.
The 44-year-old and his wife Amanda train guide dogs. He is also a firefighter in Dundee and has a busy run of shifts before he returns to north London for his third round match after Christmas. He will even be working on the big day itself.
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“I’m just going to go home and chill out for Christmas,” he joked following his victory over Gurney. “I’m on a day shift the 23rd, day shift the 24th, night shift Christmas night, night shift Boxing night and then travel back down here on the 27th. Nice and easy, a chilled out schedule!”
But Soutar is grateful to his employers for allowing him to have time for big darts events.
“My work have been great with me by giving me these four days off to be here,” he added. “It was meant to be my shift today. As long as the fire brigade are all right with what I’m doing and I pay the guys back when I need to pay them back… I owe quite a few of the guys quite a few days.
“I’m crossing every bridge as I come to it and I don’t look massively in front. I don’t have a three-year plan, a five-year plan [for darts], at the moment I’m just looking at January, February, March.”
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Rather harshly, Soutar, who takes to the stage bedecked in tartan trousers and a shirt displaying the Scottish flag, has received plenty of stick from the Ally Pally crowd so far. He is determined to let the abuse go over his head though.
“I was getting quite loud abuse at the start [against Gurney]. I’m wearing quite loud tartan trousers today and I expect it [the abuse] and I quite like it,” he said.
“Because I won the first set, they went quiet and went through the normal songs. It didn’t affect me but I did love seeing the Scotland flags in the crowd.”
He added: Let them boo, it’s doesn’t affect my game. They’re paying for a ticket for a day at the darts. I actually stopped looking at the crowd because I was getting a lot of abuse from a lot of people. I said to my manager this morning that I wasn’t going to take on the crowd at all.”
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