Two-time darts world champion Gary Anderson has hit out at the ‘boring’ younger generation of players with ‘their bloody earphones in’ as he bemoaned the lack of ‘banter’ in the modern game.
Fresh from his first round victory over Luke Woodhouse on day two of the World Matchplay, The Flying Scotsman, 54, longed for his days competing with the likes of Adrian Lewis, Phil Taylor and Kevin Painter.
‘Youngsters are boring. Absolutely boring,’ said Anderson. ‘You talk to them, they’re too busy looking at their phone. They’re sitting on their phones with their bloody earphones in. Don’t talk to you. It’s a completely different life.’
He added: ‘I was sitting thinking the other day, having a talk with (Ian) White, (Adrian) Lewis, (Phil) Taylor, (Kevin) Painter, we used to sit and have a cracking laugh.
‘Nowadays, I’d rather sit like this. Nobody talks to anybody. You don’t have a good laugh, you don’t have a bit of banter. You need to have a laugh. Doesn’t matter what you do in life, on a building site, office, you’ve always got to have a laugh. Nowadays, there’s not much of that going about.’
The new wave of darts players – led by current world champion Luke Littler – have helped usher the sport into a new age. There is more attention on events than ever and more money than ever for its stars.
Two-time darts world champion Gary Anderson has hit out at the ‘boring’ younger generation of players
The 54-year-old accused the younger generation of players of being too insular compared to previous stars of the sport
Luke Littler’s remarkable emergence has helped bring the sport to new audiences and earned its stars bigger pay packets
Anderson acknowledged the today’s players are more professional than performers of the past but he insisted that they need to ‘calm down’ at times.
‘The youngsters, they’re here to do their job. They’ve realised they’ve got a great chance in life to make a lot of bloody money, buy their first house, then their second house.
‘But they need to calm down and think: right, this is my job. That’s it.’
