Good, bad and ugly darts shirts: Paul Nicholson looks back how attire at the oche has evolved down the years

In my wardrobe at the moment, I have a one-piece polo shirt that has a bit of velour down the middle with a zip on the front. It’s not too dissimilar to something a darts player might have worn in a late 1970s World Championship and certainly something any budding darts player would have worn down the social club in that era.

I looked at it the other day and wondered how on earth anyone could play darts in that kind of top in a smoky atmosphere in the middle of the summer. There were also shirt and tie combos with the big collars and some players even used to compete with a jacket on as well!

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It just goes to show how much both material engineering and the attitude towards comfort while playing sport have changed dramatically in the past few decades.

Although we associate the darts shirt with the image of the game, you’ve also got to include it as one of the many reasons why the standard has gone up.

If you had a special exhibition event in the middle of the summer with the world’s top 10 wearing the old polyester-style top, they’d feel very uncomfortable very quickly and it would affect their performance.

Icons of shirts

I’d say the first iconic darts shirt was Eric Bristow’s red one with Crafty Cockney on the back because even now, that will spring to mind when you’re asked to think of your favourites.

It holds a lot of warmth and nostalgia about the early days of televised big-time darts, when players didn’t yet have ‘brands’ in the way we think of them today.

But in the 80s there was a match that would signify what we’d eventually have in modern-day darts. The 1987 World Championship final between Eric Bristow in red and John Lowe in blue, just like in boxing – and the rivalry was pretty fierce too!

A big section of the fans were in the ‘red corner’ and another big section were in the ‘blue corner’, and it’s fair to say there wasn’t a lot of love lost by the end of it.

There weren’t a great deal of charismatic shirts before the split in the BDO and when a player did wear one, they were seen as mavericks and those who didn’t conform.

Bob Anderson’s cowboy shirts stood from the rest in an era where there were many badly dressed players as he built up his on-stage character and he stuck with it for many years. I believe this helped set a trend that others would eventually follow.

Alan Warriner-Little played in the 1993 final wearing something that wouldn’t be out of place in a Line Dancing class! That era in general was a very strange time for fashion and I think Alan was just trying to be different. Sure, it looks dreadful now, but at the time I applauded it.

He lost to John Lowe, who won his third world title in ‘his’ usual colour of dark blue.

Some players, including Rod Harrington too, were now choosing what they wanted to wear rather than just conforming to traditional styles.

Split in styles

In the early days of the PDC there was just one iconic shirt and that belonged to Dennis Priestley. There were other ‘brands’ before him – such as Crafty Cockney, Old Stoneface and The Limestone Cowboy - but that red and black Dennis the Menace shirt was a conscious attempt to make his brand one of the most recognisable in darts post-split.

In 1991 when he won his first BDO world title he was part of the conformity wearing his blue and white Yorkshire county shirt with pride but when the PDC started in 1994 there would have been a directive from above for players to change their images.

They wanted to give the players individuality and Dennis took this with both hands and ran with it. He even took it one step further occasionally by wearing a leather jacket onto the stage as well and he was cool enough to pull it off despite being in his 40s. I even saw a picture of him on social media recently wearing the same shirt!

Other players also tried to do different things such as Peter Evison wearing some very daring tiger trousers, which should have got more press than they did, but Phil Taylor didn’t really get the most out of his Power brand colour wise until much later on his career when it became associated with light blue.

He tried red, green, purple, white and all sorts of colours throughout the 90s when he’d also wear those awful sequins that made him look like a lampshade!

I’m sure he’ll look back on those shirts and think “what was I thinking” but those shirts were making a statement and helped the PDC stand out as being a lot more razzmatazz than the BDO.

That said, in 1997, while Taylor was wearing sequins on his way to the PDC world title, Les Wallace won at Lakeside wearing a kilt! Changes where happening on both sides of the divide, with Ted Hankey’s persona as the Count, for example, starting to shine through after the Millennium.

Another new style idea being toyed with was the appearances of animations on the back of some shirts such as Phil Taylor’s around the turn of the century. No longer did it have to be just a written player nickname.

Shirts were becoming more flamboyant in their designs and Peter Manley got the creative juices flowing with his Las Vegas style attire.

Then, of course, came a young man from Essex called Wayne Mardle and he took darts branding even further with his Hawaii 501 moniker in the PDC.

Let’s face it, everyone wanted a Hawaiian shirt because of him. There was one year in particular when he reached the World Matchplay final and every single Hawaiian shirt in Blackpool sold out!

He may have missed out on making money from people doing that but how did he respond? He brought out his own signature shirts including the famous orange one which he wore the year he beat The Power in the World Championship quarter-finals.

Selling the brands

I think players were becoming more aware about the marketing potential of darts shirts but didn’t know how to do it.

Wayne was a bit of a pioneer in regards to merchandising his brand and it wasn’t long before more and more players were getting their shirts made by manufacturers in bulk as replicas to sell on websites plus at events and exhibitions.

When I joined Unicorn in around 2008 I think they were only selling two generic types of darts shirts and the fabric wasn’t particularly modern or cutting edge so things have come a very long way in just over 12 years since then.

All darts manufacturers now have come on board with breathable fabrics and printing variations, which is a lot cheaper, and that’s why you even see plenty of pub players getting themselves stylish shirts to wear in local competitions.

I don’t think we’ll see fans buying replica shirts in anywhere near the same proportion as football ones, but that’s more to do with it not being a team sport rather than if they look cool enough to wear.

You have to love the player a lot to buy their shirt and that’s why Phil Taylor and Michael van Gerwen shirts have been the best sellers over the past 10 years.

Signature colours

People like shirts that have signature colours and there’s no bigger one in world darts than the powerful Michael van Gerwen green.

Dave Chisnall is also known for playing in yellow of course, and for majors he has the name of the tournament on the back to ensure each one is different.

It’s a really good test for the darting public to play a colour association game for all eras. For example, when it comes to white, I think of Steve Beaton and with black I still think Ted Hankey. Red and blue are Eric Bristow and John Lowe for me, whereas pink is a toss-up between Peter Manley and Keegan Brown. A lot of answers you get will show the age of the fan!

James Wade is one of the old school guys who doesn't really have any interest in the darts shirt movement. If you take that number plate off the back, he’s been wearing that same dark navy shirt with the pinstripes for about 12 years.

Clash of styles

One of the beauties of darts is the contrasts you can get on the oche – whether it’s the playing styles, personalities or the differences in what they’re wearing.

The 2014 World Championship final is a prime example, when we had Michael van Gerwen in his green and Peter Wright who was starting to go nuts with his Snakebite branding.

What were you thinking of him back then? I remember being at the venue and thinking “you clever sod” because nobody else was doing anything like it. I knew it was here to stay and it’s obviously had a long-lasting effect on how players create an on-stage character.

I think Wayne Mardle had a huge impact in the United Kingdom before that, but Snakebite has captivated a different, bigger audience around the world due to his branding thanks to the growth of the game around the world, plus social media.

Eye sores

I once wore a tartan coloured shirt with a black tie and had a bad bleached blond haircut at the time! It still plagues me to this day! What was I thinking?

That’s definitely the worst shirt I’ve worn and I’ve had some shockers.

At the time I wanted to wear a different shirt for every event and at the Grand Slam of Darts I even wanted to wear a different shirt for every round.

I didn’t find a shirt I was comfortable in until the early part of 2011 when I found the denim blue colour shirt with the skinny black tie. I wore that when defeating Gary Anderson and Phil Taylor on the same day of the UK Open and that became my look that I had an emotional attachment with.

Phil Taylor once wore a green shirt with sequins around 1997 and it was just so, so bad. It was an awful fashion year for Phil no matter what he decided to wear but to his credit, he was trying to stand out in that era of darts.

Gary Anderson had a shocker with a shirt that looked like a couch around 2012 when he got his made by a Scottish company whose name we can’t print because it has a swear word in it!

He didn’t like wearing them and once he got rid of them, he started to play properly again!

Top three

My absolute favourite will forever be Dennis Priestley’s red and black shirt and I’ll always remember playing him on the famous red and black stage of the World Championship.

On the podium, I’m going for the white shirt Jocky Wilson wore during the 1989 world final with his name on the back. Purely for what that match and his rivalry with Eric Bristow represented.

I like individuality and courage of conviction so I’m also going to select Kyle Anderson’s as one of my other top three shirts. I love his aboriginal designs and how it displays the pride he has about his roots.

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