TOMORROW NIGHT IN London’s Alexandra Palace, Mickey Mansell of Clonoe will take a final swig of the little beer he allows himself. He’ll grab his darts after a final couple of hours of practice backstage, and head for the longest walk as Maniac 2000 thunders from the speakers.
That’s when the game of darts looks its most lurid.
Pyrotechnics. Chase The Sun blaring out. Fans straining to touch the hem of a tungsten technician. Costumes. Beers. Lads! Lads! Lads! STAND UP! IF YOU LOVE THE DARTS!
And then it all melts away to leave two competitors with incredible ability to throw darts at a numbered board, all the while displaying their mental arithmetic.
When it’s packaged by Barry Hearn and sold by Sky TV, darts looks like one of the most glamorous sports around.
It will appear so when ‘The Clonoe Cyclone’ opens his PDC World Championship against Tomoya Goto. Goto’s from Japan, 28 years old. He’s dangerous. He took out Ian ‘Diamond’ White, a former world championship quarter-finalist, last Christmas at the same event.
The winner gets to play Jonny Clayton, himself a plasterer by trade who can still be spotted around the place with a hawk and trowel, skimming ceilings.
Mansell is 51. No matter what happens, he will play out his involvement in the tournament, enjoy what’s left of Christmas with wife Emer and their three children, and think about getting the van loaded up with the various routers, planers, chop saws and hand tools for life back on the building sites in January. As glamorous as darts can look when you’re on the couch, draped in tinsel, and experiencing turkey repetitions like a Roman Candle, it doesn’t pay all the bills.
Mansell’s double life has gotten harder. Right now he’s in the middle of a refurbishment of a house in Belfast, overlooking Belfast Lough, and while he likes his joinery work, the PDC’s decision to move the tournament from long weekends to the middle of the week has left him with fewer working days.
How much, then, would it take for him to sell up the van, and do this darting thing as his sole occupation?
“It’s not about a leap of faith. It’s about taking a chance. Maybe my situation is a wee bit different from Brendan Dolan’s or Willie O’Connor’s,” Mansell begins.
“With a wife and three childer, there has to be money coming in consistently. On the PDC, the pro tours are where the money is.”
But here’s the rub: you have to qualify to get into those events. They are staged every two weeks. So for each event, he would need to be earning two weeks’ wages.
Plus travelling. Accommodation. Hotel and bar costs. Taxis, buses, trains.
As well as that, you’re inviting a lot of ennui and stress upon yourself.
“Whenever I won my tour card in 2011, I went and gave it a go and it was the very first year of Q School. I was paying my own way and at that time it was £105 entrance fee to each tournament,” Mansell says.
“And then you were paying your flights and accommodation, taking maybe Monday and a Friday off work. So boys were on about playing all year – I was playing week to week. I was winning money to stay on the tour, from one week to the next.
“It wasn’t ideal. It was literally operating in a professional environment. It’s the way I operated for five or six years. If I was playing two tournaments back-to-back, I would have to have those fees paid twelve days before the event, and hotels and whatever. You’re out a lot of money before a single dart is thrown.”
Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
After that, win one game and you got £200. It wouldn’t touch the sides.
And the draw was an open one. He could find himself stepping up to the oche and facing Michael Van Gerwen and Phil Taylor. All for a crummy £200.
It was an extreme form of gambling. Gambling on one’s self to throw darts. Pure hustling, schlepping around England, getting used to the regional accents and spending too much time staring at the ceilings of Travelodges.
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A couple of weeks when he wasn’t throwing right could be a mini disaster. A month would be enough to put his lights out.
Now, it’s different. He has his van, stuffed full of joinery tools. He’s mainly first- and second-fix work, enjoying the trimming out work in particular.
Sometimes, another man might need hand putting a roof on and he’ll jump onto that, but not if he can help it. It’s hard on the body and not safe.
When he gets home, it’s not to a hotel lobby, but to Clonoe and Emer and children MJ, Laura and Eoin. They have their own things going on and he’ll catch up on all that over the dinner table.
Back when he went full-time at darts, MJ was seven. Mickey was ploughing money into a dream. It was mega-stressful. More than once, he asked himself what in God’s name he was doing, waiting to play a game of darts over in England.
Growing up, he first came across the notion of darts when he and some buddies were scavenging for stuff to put on a Halloween bonfire. A man they knew was throwing out some stuff and they came across a well-perforated dartboard.
Back at the Mansell family home, there was a shed where they could put it up. Over the winters, the boys would throw darts. Something to do when football with Clonoe O’Rahillys dried up over the winter.
He played football until he was 33. He loved it, and as one of those men caught in the half-light of being a very decent reserve player who would be constantly called into senior action, played more than anyone else.
When he finished playing, he spent more time throwing in the winter of 2007. Soon, his practice became a nightly thing.
He had met Emer in Philadelphia in the early ‘90s and made their home in Tyrone. But at weekends they traversed the country where he played tournaments in Cork, Wexford, Tipperary and all over Dublin.
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He had a simple approach. He wanted to play the very best players. And if he could find them, the money would sure find him.
One Easter Monday night, he went to Blacklion on the Cavan-Fermanagh border, into Eamon’s Piano Bar. His great friend Brendan Dolan was the resident gunslinger there and they had a massive annual tournament.
Mansell won it. He knew then that he had something.
“I went to a qualifier in Dublin in 2010 and the winner got a place in the World Championships and I won it,” he recalls.
“Things happened, went to A-School three weeks after that, won it, and then went into the PDC after that.”
But such an ascent came at a cost.
“I didn’t manage it ideally. I was fortunate that the wife definitely reared the children. I was coming home from work and had a two-hour gap after getting something to eat and spending a bit of time (practising).
“I had to practise a couple of hours a night. Professionals can practise for four or five hours a day. You can be sure of it. I was only doing two, so that time was very important.
“They grew up knowing that. It’s probably only the last few years when they can see the benefits and what it has taken to compete at a high level.
“It takes a lot of dedication. They just think it’s the routine, and if you work at something and get the rewards, it justifies the effort.”
In trying to figure out what might work best for him, someone put him in touch with Dr Liam Moggan, a man with a lifetime’s experience in coaching, but not a second at darts.
Didn’t matter.
“One of the most intelligent men I have ever met in my life, a fascinating man,” beams Mansell.
“I went to see him a few times and he was asking how I was working, writing it all down, what my hours was, every single hour, if I was eating, practising and I was telling him as he wrote it all down.
“He shook his head at the very end and said to me that what I was doing is crazy. He said, ‘You are obsessed with what you are doing, but you will end up doing it on your own. You’ll have no family.’
“I wasn’t making any important time for the family. I had the blinkers on from my own point of view, trying to do as much as I could and thinking of darts the whole time. He reeled me in and highlighted that.
“It was very, very important, especially with the family so young.”
He would find himself stressed to the hilt in England, missing his family and worrying over the small stuff. And then he might miss a double tops and the game is gone altogether.
“So when you’re playing well, for example, there are a lot of reasons behind playing well. Most of it is not even coming down to practice. It’s the feel-good factor, your preparation, and a backdrop of other things creates that environment.
Mickey Mansell walks on to his song of choice; 'Maniac 2000. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
“There were other wee things he pointed me towards, practice routines and whatever. He had no background in darts whatsoever. But to be honest, it was never about darts. It was more about the lifestyle and how I was thinking about myself and what was happening. It fascinated me, to be honest, and I could listen to him for hours.”
He has compartmentalised his life, but still has to put in the hard yards.
“If you are at it the whole time, it sucks the life out of you. All you are thinking about is darts all the time.
“But I come home and I know that come half seven, I am heading out to practise. Whenever I get out there, I am focussed for those two, two-and-a-half hours.”
He goes into the room, but his mobile does not come with him. There’s no television. It’s not a man cave. It’s a darts room. No frills.
If people call to the house, they can talk to Emer. That’s the way it is and he doesn’t apologise.
He does that every night in life. If Clonoe have a big game on, he might get home an hour earlier and get an hour in, before going home and adding another 90 minutes.
Around once a fortnight, he might allow himself a night off.
As for life on tour, it’s changing. He is not against drinking, and will have a couple.
But he sees the young lads, your Luke Littlers and so on, and it’s changing. They are more likely to discuss a sports psychologist they have been in touch with, rather than get the beers in.
Such is life. Tomorrow, he’ll be under the glare of the lights at the biggest venue of all. For three hours before the first dart is thrown, he will be practising. It’s in that environment that the tension builds.
He’ll feel it off Goto.
And then the two will be called. His walk-on music will strike up, and his part in the annual Christmas jamboree begins.
“It’s the wee bit that you enjoy. For one minute. It is a bit of relief and your mind is off it for that little bit of time.
“When you get to the top of that stage, your attitude changes.”
The rest of us will all wriggle our ass groove that little deeper into the sofa, flick some crumbs off the Christmas jumper, and settle in to watch the seasonal mental warfare.
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From the building site to Ally Pally: The double life of tungsten technician Mickey Mansell
TOMORROW NIGHT IN London’s Alexandra Palace, Mickey Mansell of Clonoe will take a final swig of the little beer he allows himself. He’ll grab his darts after a final couple of hours of practice backstage, and head for the longest walk as Maniac 2000 thunders from the speakers.
That’s when the game of darts looks its most lurid.
Pyrotechnics. Chase The Sun blaring out. Fans straining to touch the hem of a tungsten technician. Costumes. Beers. Lads! Lads! Lads! STAND UP! IF YOU LOVE THE DARTS!
And then it all melts away to leave two competitors with incredible ability to throw darts at a numbered board, all the while displaying their mental arithmetic.
When it’s packaged by Barry Hearn and sold by Sky TV, darts looks like one of the most glamorous sports around.
It will appear so when ‘The Clonoe Cyclone’ opens his PDC World Championship against Tomoya Goto. Goto’s from Japan, 28 years old. He’s dangerous. He took out Ian ‘Diamond’ White, a former world championship quarter-finalist, last Christmas at the same event.
The winner gets to play Jonny Clayton, himself a plasterer by trade who can still be spotted around the place with a hawk and trowel, skimming ceilings.
Mansell is 51. No matter what happens, he will play out his involvement in the tournament, enjoy what’s left of Christmas with wife Emer and their three children, and think about getting the van loaded up with the various routers, planers, chop saws and hand tools for life back on the building sites in January. As glamorous as darts can look when you’re on the couch, draped in tinsel, and experiencing turkey repetitions like a Roman Candle, it doesn’t pay all the bills.
Mansell’s double life has gotten harder. Right now he’s in the middle of a refurbishment of a house in Belfast, overlooking Belfast Lough, and while he likes his joinery work, the PDC’s decision to move the tournament from long weekends to the middle of the week has left him with fewer working days.
How much, then, would it take for him to sell up the van, and do this darting thing as his sole occupation?
“It’s not about a leap of faith. It’s about taking a chance. Maybe my situation is a wee bit different from Brendan Dolan’s or Willie O’Connor’s,” Mansell begins.
“With a wife and three childer, there has to be money coming in consistently. On the PDC, the pro tours are where the money is.”
But here’s the rub: you have to qualify to get into those events. They are staged every two weeks. So for each event, he would need to be earning two weeks’ wages.
Plus travelling. Accommodation. Hotel and bar costs. Taxis, buses, trains.
As well as that, you’re inviting a lot of ennui and stress upon yourself.
“Whenever I won my tour card in 2011, I went and gave it a go and it was the very first year of Q School. I was paying my own way and at that time it was £105 entrance fee to each tournament,” Mansell says.
“And then you were paying your flights and accommodation, taking maybe Monday and a Friday off work. So boys were on about playing all year – I was playing week to week. I was winning money to stay on the tour, from one week to the next.
“It wasn’t ideal. It was literally operating in a professional environment. It’s the way I operated for five or six years. If I was playing two tournaments back-to-back, I would have to have those fees paid twelve days before the event, and hotels and whatever. You’re out a lot of money before a single dart is thrown.”
After that, win one game and you got £200. It wouldn’t touch the sides.
And the draw was an open one. He could find himself stepping up to the oche and facing Michael Van Gerwen and Phil Taylor. All for a crummy £200.
It was an extreme form of gambling. Gambling on one’s self to throw darts. Pure hustling, schlepping around England, getting used to the regional accents and spending too much time staring at the ceilings of Travelodges.
A couple of weeks when he wasn’t throwing right could be a mini disaster. A month would be enough to put his lights out.
Now, it’s different. He has his van, stuffed full of joinery tools. He’s mainly first- and second-fix work, enjoying the trimming out work in particular.
Sometimes, another man might need hand putting a roof on and he’ll jump onto that, but not if he can help it. It’s hard on the body and not safe.
When he gets home, it’s not to a hotel lobby, but to Clonoe and Emer and children MJ, Laura and Eoin. They have their own things going on and he’ll catch up on all that over the dinner table.
Back when he went full-time at darts, MJ was seven. Mickey was ploughing money into a dream. It was mega-stressful. More than once, he asked himself what in God’s name he was doing, waiting to play a game of darts over in England.
Growing up, he first came across the notion of darts when he and some buddies were scavenging for stuff to put on a Halloween bonfire. A man they knew was throwing out some stuff and they came across a well-perforated dartboard.
Back at the Mansell family home, there was a shed where they could put it up. Over the winters, the boys would throw darts. Something to do when football with Clonoe O’Rahillys dried up over the winter.
He played football until he was 33. He loved it, and as one of those men caught in the half-light of being a very decent reserve player who would be constantly called into senior action, played more than anyone else.
When he finished playing, he spent more time throwing in the winter of 2007. Soon, his practice became a nightly thing.
He had met Emer in Philadelphia in the early ‘90s and made their home in Tyrone. But at weekends they traversed the country where he played tournaments in Cork, Wexford, Tipperary and all over Dublin.
He had a simple approach. He wanted to play the very best players. And if he could find them, the money would sure find him.
One Easter Monday night, he went to Blacklion on the Cavan-Fermanagh border, into Eamon’s Piano Bar. His great friend Brendan Dolan was the resident gunslinger there and they had a massive annual tournament.
Mansell won it. He knew then that he had something.
“I went to a qualifier in Dublin in 2010 and the winner got a place in the World Championships and I won it,” he recalls.
“Things happened, went to A-School three weeks after that, won it, and then went into the PDC after that.”
But such an ascent came at a cost.
“I didn’t manage it ideally. I was fortunate that the wife definitely reared the children. I was coming home from work and had a two-hour gap after getting something to eat and spending a bit of time (practising).
“I had to practise a couple of hours a night. Professionals can practise for four or five hours a day. You can be sure of it. I was only doing two, so that time was very important.
“They grew up knowing that. It’s probably only the last few years when they can see the benefits and what it has taken to compete at a high level.
“It takes a lot of dedication. They just think it’s the routine, and if you work at something and get the rewards, it justifies the effort.”
In trying to figure out what might work best for him, someone put him in touch with Dr Liam Moggan, a man with a lifetime’s experience in coaching, but not a second at darts.
Didn’t matter.
“One of the most intelligent men I have ever met in my life, a fascinating man,” beams Mansell.
“I went to see him a few times and he was asking how I was working, writing it all down, what my hours was, every single hour, if I was eating, practising and I was telling him as he wrote it all down.
“I wasn’t making any important time for the family. I had the blinkers on from my own point of view, trying to do as much as I could and thinking of darts the whole time. He reeled me in and highlighted that.
“It was very, very important, especially with the family so young.”
He would find himself stressed to the hilt in England, missing his family and worrying over the small stuff. And then he might miss a double tops and the game is gone altogether.
“So when you’re playing well, for example, there are a lot of reasons behind playing well. Most of it is not even coming down to practice. It’s the feel-good factor, your preparation, and a backdrop of other things creates that environment.
“There were other wee things he pointed me towards, practice routines and whatever. He had no background in darts whatsoever. But to be honest, it was never about darts. It was more about the lifestyle and how I was thinking about myself and what was happening. It fascinated me, to be honest, and I could listen to him for hours.”
He has compartmentalised his life, but still has to put in the hard yards.
“If you are at it the whole time, it sucks the life out of you. All you are thinking about is darts all the time.
“But I come home and I know that come half seven, I am heading out to practise. Whenever I get out there, I am focussed for those two, two-and-a-half hours.”
He goes into the room, but his mobile does not come with him. There’s no television. It’s not a man cave. It’s a darts room. No frills.
If people call to the house, they can talk to Emer. That’s the way it is and he doesn’t apologise.
He does that every night in life. If Clonoe have a big game on, he might get home an hour earlier and get an hour in, before going home and adding another 90 minutes.
Around once a fortnight, he might allow himself a night off.
As for life on tour, it’s changing. He is not against drinking, and will have a couple.
But he sees the young lads, your Luke Littlers and so on, and it’s changing. They are more likely to discuss a sports psychologist they have been in touch with, rather than get the beers in.
Such is life. Tomorrow, he’ll be under the glare of the lights at the biggest venue of all. For three hours before the first dart is thrown, he will be practising. It’s in that environment that the tension builds.
He’ll feel it off Goto.
And then the two will be called. His walk-on music will strike up, and his part in the annual Christmas jamboree begins.
“It’s the wee bit that you enjoy. For one minute. It is a bit of relief and your mind is off it for that little bit of time.
“When you get to the top of that stage, your attitude changes.”
The rest of us will all wriggle our ass groove that little deeper into the sofa, flick some crumbs off the Christmas jumper, and settle in to watch the seasonal mental warfare.
Long may he throw.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Clonoe Cyclone Darts Interview love the darts Mickey Mansell PDC