World Matchplay reflections: Peter Wright's crowning glory, 'trash talking', highlight of the week and what next for MVG and Price?

Peter Wright ended his majestic week at the Winter Gardens on an ultimate high as he won the World Matchplay for the first time in his career that goes from strength to strength at the age of 51.

He now becomes the fourth player in history to complete the World Championship-World Matchplay double and he's won them both in 18 months, so you have to wonder how many more majors he's still got left to win.

Wright’s dominance a fitting ending

I don’t think there was any doubt that he'd beat Dimitri Van den Bergh in the final after about 10 legs but I think you could probably tell even during the walk-ons when both players had such different demeanours.

While I saw hope in Van den Bergh, it looked as though Peter was someone ready to go in for the kill and that’s what happened.

Dimitri had to fight so hard for all of the legs he won and was almost always under pressure from Peter, who looked so much more relaxed and in control of his game from start to finish.

I love watching Dimitri play and he’s such an immense talent but he’s still at the stage of his career where he does have to put so much effort in – you can see it on his face and also his sense of relief when he does hit those doubles.

Peter has done that work earlier in his career, experienced all those battle scars and mental torture of final defeats – mainly to Michael van Gerwen - and brilliantly come through it all to pick up these big titles. You now feel he’s banished past demons, fills his mind with positivity and makes it look so much easier to hit incredible standards than others do.

Wright an all-time great?

Peter is currently in the bracket as other one-time world champions who have won other majors but often a player’s legacy is about how they feel their careers compared to their aspirations.

He’s already come out and said he wants to win a second world title in 2022 so that says to me his legacy is far from written. But as far as other people’s perception of him is concerned, he’s definitely one of the best 15 players to have ever thrown a dart.

I wouldn’t put him in the top 10 yet but by the time he has finished his career, I’m sure he will be.

Talking a good game

I can’t stand the fact that some players think it’s wrong that Peter goes to some events and predicts he’s going to win them.

Some players will think “I can win” but the way Peter was feeling, he truly believed he would win…and he backed it up.

This is not a new thing with Peter though. If you go back to the time during his rivalry with Michael van Gerwen when he lost a lot of finals, he often said he’d bash him up. And quite often he didn’t.

But now he’s managed to defeat him in a World Championship final and on his way to World Matchplay glory – in spectacular circumstances – so in many ways that makes his achievements more impressive.

Peter has put his reputation on the line many times in his career whether it’s by what he’s said or what he’s wearing when he was working his way up without the titles to back it up. He wasn’t afraid to do that and now it’s paying off. He stuck to his guns and his faith has been rewarded.

We can’t criticise his predictions – even when he said MVG won’t win a TV title in 2021 – because so far he’s been right!

It’s up to others to prove him wrong but at the moment I think he’s on course to fulfil another prediction of becoming world number one. He’s not far behind Gerwyn Price now and we could be about to see a game of world number one tennis like we get in some other sports.

New rivalries?

I don’t think there’s a rivalry between Gerwyn Price and Dimitri Van den Bergh.

They just got embroiled in a bit of bother about slow play and imitating one another’s celebrations but Blackpool does funny things to people and I don’t expect it to carry on into future meetings.

Rivalries need a lot of history. Peter Wright’s one with Michael van Gerwen certainly has that with 86 meetings. No two players have ever met more than that in the current PDC era.

And it’s not finished – their matches just keep getting better and I never get sick of watching them play.

Price obviously has his past with Gary Anderson and MVG but I don’t think he’s really found his main antithesis in darts quite yet and I’m not sure it will be Van den Bergh.

Match of the week

Peter Wright’s clash with MVG was extraordinary even though the scoreline didn’t end up being that close at 17-10.

We have to give Michael credit for clawing his way back into the match during the middle part of it thanks to some explosive darts that really caused Peter problems. Also, bare in mind Snakebite was averaging around 110 at the time.

Peter, however, played the best long-format match of his career from a performance point of view and I don’t think anyone would dispute that. His 149 checkout was one of the best finishes of his life because it told MVG “I can take everything you throw at me but I can still do this.”

The only other game that came close to it for drama was Michael Smith’s victory over Jose de Sousa, when he threw a magical 108 checkout after surviving a match dart before going on to close out the win.

If Michael is going to go on and achieve what we all hope he can then he’s got to draw a lot of inspiration from this and how he handled the pressure on one of the biggest stages.

What next for MVG and Price?

I don’t think Michael will overreact whatsoever. He played very well in that semi-final and I have no doubts he’ll take the positives.

He is under pressure for not winning a title this year and he’s never experienced that before but he’s mature enough to know there are parts of his game to work on and he has the focus and drive to do so.

Gerwyn Price is known for dominating his opponrnts with aggressiveness on the dart board but we are starting to see some fragility when the chips are down, such as when his opponents are playing slower than he’d like to.

He’s unable to hide his emotions – as we saw against Dimitri – and that’s something future opponents can exploit to his detriment. He is still learning having not been a professional at the highest level for that many years so he may need to address this if he’s going to pick up more major titles soon. I do however think him winning more is inevitable.

Polish Eagle soaring

Ratajski can be regarded as one of the biggest success stories and what he’s doing for Polish darts is incredible.

It’s just a giant kick in the bollocks that the World Matchplay wasn’t even televised in Poland so they really need to do more over there to give him the support and coverage he deserves.

Darts on the radio

I’m superbly fortunate to work with a tremendous producer in Matt Gubbins at TalkSport and to have Chris Mason in my corner with all his statistical knowledge helps us create a wonderful product for fans to enjoy darts if they can’t watch it on TV.

Ian Danter and Mark Wilson are now permanent fixtures for darts on the radio and they’re also so passionate about the game and have enjoyment in their hearts when they commentate on it.

Abigail Davies’ mix of humour, knowledge and genuine enjoyment for darts has also given us another dimension to the coverage, as well as Dan Dawson’s brilliant updates.

Darts on the radio started as an experiment but it’s here to stay.

Fans are back

We enjoyed doing commentary at the World Championship even without fans but it got to the point where we were desperate for that adrenaline kick that you can only get with a full crowd right in front of you.

Nine days is a long time to cover an event and everyone gets tired talking so much but there were two 100+ checkouts this week which were amazing to commentate on. Nathan Aspinall’s 130 against MVG and Peter Wright’s 149 against MVG. I looked out at the crowd during those moments and that’s what darts is all about.

Let’s just hope fans are here to stay for the rest of the season and beyond.

Peter Wright's route to World Matchplay glory

• Rd 1: 10-3 v Danny Noppert
  Average: 99.75
  180s: 3
  Doubles: 10/19 (52.63%)
  100+ Checkouts: 121, 105
• R2: 11-5 v Joe Cullen
  Average: 105.46
  180s: 7
  Doubles: 11/20 (55%)
  100+ Checkouts: 106, 103
• QF: 16-7 v Michael Smith
  Average: 100.37
  180s: 9
  Doubles: 16/43 (37.21%)
  100+ Checkouts: None
• SF: 17-10 v Michael van Gerwen
  Average: 110.37
  180s: 12
  Doubles: 17/37 (45.95%)
  100+ Checkouts: 149, 121, 121
• F: 18-9 v Dimitri Van den Bergh
  Average: 105.9
  180s: 10
  Doubles: 18/31 (58.06%)
  100+ Checkouts: None, highest 89

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