Should Fallon Sherrock should be given a Premier League Darts spot and a PDC Tour card?

Fallon Sherrock has dominated the headlines yet again this week with her history-making exploits at the Grand Slam of Darts.

Having recorded the highest ever televised average for a woman of 101.55 in a 5-0 mauling of Mike de Dekker before becoming the first female player to reach the knockout stages thanks to ‘that’ magical 170 checkout, the Queen of the Palace maintained her fairytale run with a 10-5 dismantling of a rattled Mensur Suljovic, who she famously beat at the Ally Pally.

There’s subsequently been a lot of discussion about whether she should be given a Premier League spot due to being – as Wayne Mardle put it on Twitter – the most marketable player in the game right now, while Peter Wright is behind calls for Sherrock and Lisa Ashton to be awarded PDC Tour Cards retrospectively for finishing first and second in the recent Women’s Series.

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However, world champion Gerwyn Price laughed off Mardle's comments, saying: "Some of things that Wayne says - 'give her a Tour Card, put her in the Premier League' is he nuts or what?"

Snakebite reinforced his view after ending Sherrock's Grand Slam run with a gruelling 16-13 quarter-final victory, in which she averaged 99, saying: "This lady deserves a place in the Premier League."

Here’s what our columnist Paul Nicholson and darts writer Chris Hammer think about both issues.

Paul Nicholson: ‘Rewards should be earned, not given’

We can all get carried away about various things on social media – myself included – and this topic of Fallon Sherrock going into the Premier League is no different.

It’s fantastic that she’s put herself in the frame but that’s all she will be in as far as the PDC are concerned right now. They won’t make any decision yet because they understand from years gone by that anything can happen between now and the World Championship final that changes the thinking yet again. Just look at the year Andy Hamilton reached the final and forced his way into a line-up that had pretty much been decided.

There’s still two major tournaments to play so we do need to take stock and realise Fallon’s only focus right now is getting even further in the Grand Slam rather than thinking about the Premier League. * (This was written prior to her QF defeat)

I know Fallon on a personal level so I know what she’d want – that is to test herself against the world’s best on a regular basis and secure her professional and financial future.

If she loses to Peter Wright in the quarter-finals, doesn’t win enough games at the World Championship to climb into the top 64 and automatically earn a Tour Card, and then misses out at Qualifying School, then a place in the Premier League would be problematic.

She’d have the disappointment of not being able to play on the PDC Tour and then have to deal with the criticisms from keyboard warriors who say she shouldn’t be in the Premier League. It’s just too soon.

We need Fallon to earn her place on the Tour and compete against the best for a couple of years just like Lisa Ashton managed to do at Q School two years ago.

I want them both on the Tour in 2022, and they’ll be the trailblazers for more women to follow in the coming years. A decade from now I’d want to see at least 10 women with PDC Tour Cards and maybe there will be a day when it’s a roughly 50-50 split based purely on ability.

The players themselves don’t feel embarrassed to lose to a woman by any means – I lost to Fallon at Q School a couple of years ago, but I didn’t lose to a woman, I lost to a better player.

As far as the media and sports fans are concerned, whenever a woman does anything for the first time, it will naturally get huge attention because it is genuinely exciting and inspiring to watch, but it won’t be too long before nobody bats an eyelid when a woman beats a man. It won’t be an issue to get excited about and that’s where we eventually want to get to.

So, should she and Lisa get awarded PDC Tour Cards to pave the way for this future?

Firstly, I don’t think cards should ever be handed out retrospectively for past achievements that weren’t originally deemed big enough for a particular prize. Even if they should have been.

If they’d said before the Women’s Series that the top two positions would earn cards then that would have been perfect. The knowledge of such rewards creates its own pressures and therefore makes the achievement more deserving, valid and fair.

There are cards available for winning the Challenge Tour and Development Tour so why not for the Women’s Series? Give them that extra cherry. It is going to be expanded to have more events next year and the standard is only going to increase, especially with the reward being so potentially lucrative.

You can’t say “oh you haven’t won a Tour card by the conventional means, but let’s give you one for something else you did instead.”

Everyone has to earn their spot knowing what’s on the line.

If Fallon doesn’t earn one automatically before the end of the year, she should go to Q School and earn one – not only because it will reinforce the PDC’s ethical position but also for her own benefit and knowing she won’t have to fend off any controversy.

Cards must be earned, not given, and I don’t think Fallon has done that yet. If she gets it in one of the right ways – which she’s more than capable of doing – then that would be incredible for her and the sport of darts.

Chris Hammer: ‘Too much too soon’

I think people are thrusting her into Premier League contention more on her marketability and that’s fair enough when you consider the overall purpose of this tournament. It’s essentially a glorified unranked exhibition featuring the most popular, headline hitting players to further boost the profile of the sport. The biggest crowd pullers for ticket sales and TV views. More often than not, they happen to be the best players in the world anyway – and the most entertaining.

We’re all being sucked into the here and now instead of being a little more patient and looking at what might be best for Fallon Sherrock as a player rather than a ‘product’.

Her televised performances have been fantastic, nerveless and spectacular. She’s beaten seven men in total on the PDC stages, lost six times and drawn 6-6 with Glen Durrant during her guest Premier League appearance in 2020 – when Duzza ended up being crowned champion.

Sherrock’s overall average in those games has been around a highly respectable 90 and she’s won almost as many legs as she’s lost (90-92) so there’s no doubt she can handle the pressure of the big occasion.

Winning any match to progress in a tournament with a 170 checkout would get any crowd going, but who else right now could do it the sort of social media frenzy Sherrock managed? The video has been viewed millions of times. That's extraordinary.

But just imagine how much better she’d be with more regular competition against the world’s top men when she finally earns a PDC Tour Card. She’s too good to never earn one and she’s hardly going to be less marketable this time next year and beyond. If anything her star and stock will have risen even higher.

Her work ethic, aspirations and drive to smash through ceilings can only intensify in elite company week in, week out so who’s to say she wouldn’t be a genuine force to be reckoned with in 2023, rather than ‘just’ selected for marketability.

That’s not to say I don't think she’s good enough to pick up wins next year, but we can’t pretend she’s consistently a top 10 player in the world right now.

Throwing her into that Premier League environment as early as 2022 could cause too much unnecessary and inevitable backlash in some quarters, especially if she hasn’t won a Tour Card. Then imagine how that cranks up after, for example, three successive heavy defeats. It could feasibly be a disaster for her confidence and growth. A bad Premier League certainly didn't help Durrant during a difficult time in his career.

Sure, this is all a negative, worst-case-scenario way of looking at it, but it is viable.

At the age of just 27, Fallon isn’t going away. She’ll continue to dazzle the world for many years to come as she keeps improving and reaching new heights. She’ll sell thousands of tickets along the way, bring in millions of viewers and will be remembered as a legendary trail blazer.

Why jeopardise that?

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