Michael van Gerwen

the last time we done this fun free magic numbers it was a joke the answer was like 5006 or something I remember

that yeah I was listening this will be slightly lower but not that much okay you know the rules four questions numerical answers add them up write them down all before Frank Sinatra sings Bright Shiny Beads if you get the number bang on you win three points otherwise closest who doesn't go bust gets two and one point for the next closest let's get going I want the number of minutes played in the game before Troy Parrott scored against Real Madrid, plus the number of PDC World Darts Championships held by Michael van Gerwen, plus the number of years since Cork have won a senior All-Ireland hurling title, plus the number of Premier League goals Evan Ferguson has scored to date.

Your 30 seconds expire when Sinatra sings by Charlie Beats.

So, many minutes gone when Parrot scored.

It was, it was a great day.

Pulled out your inner Michael van Gerwen.

Yeah, [laughs] tried to, right.

Indeed, yeah.

What if this isn't Littler's peak? At the weekend, we had a lot of chat about who would win.

In the chatroom, who would win, Prime Van Gerwen or Prime Littler? And what I said was...

I'm not going to say prime Littler.

You can judge prime Van Gogh against current Littler because we don't know what prime Littler is going to look like.

He might go to an absolute another level and go again.

We don't know.

So that can only be judged right now is prime Van Gerwen against current Lillard.

We can have the prime versus prime conversation in six, seven, eight years time, perhaps.

He won his first major PLC title there in 2023, beating Gerwin Price 5-2.

And Michael Van Gerwen, he has won six World Grand Prix titles.

Only the great Phil Taylor has beaten him with a whopping 11 titles.

So there you have it, the World Grand Prix, a darts tournament where the greatest players on the planet can walk to the jockey feeling 10 feet tall.

But just because the standard is getting deeper and there's more people that can hit the level of that doesn't mean now there's more opportunity.

Because it's like that thing, let's say Nyman goes and gets in there and he bumps out Van Gerwen.

Again, I'll give you possibly a bad example because he's probably already doing that in places.

But then everyone goes, well, why is Michael Van Gerwen not winning now? because Nyman is.

And then Nyman misses out and someone else goes in and says, oh, where's his form gone? No, his form's still there.

Nyman playing on TV, he's playing some amazing stuff.

Phil Taylor lost to Andy Callaby.

Phil Taylor lost to Kevin Painter.

No.

So I think it's the two Lukes, Michael and Gary.

End of list.

See, I would...

As we said before, it's a learning experience.

And if we're going to take a look from anywhere, you look at Rob Cross, what he did in 2017 on the European tour.

He was obviously finals, multiple events into the finals, losing to Michael Van Gerwen.

What happened on the biggest stage of all that previous year? Sorry, that following year, he played at BG and won the greatest game that's ever been played on the Alabama stage.

[humming]

Oh, Michael Van Gerwen.

Oh, right, okay.

Oh, yeah, no, Manchester.

Because while all this was happening on the European Tour, Wessel Neyman was hoovering up players' championship events as well.

And Sky Sports reported that this made him the first player since Michael Van Gerwen to win six Players' Championship titles in a single season.

But if you think we're finished, we're not.

Five days after collecting Players' Championship title number six, Veselnayman was in Bratislava, Slovakia, playing in his first ever Slovak Darts Open.

I mean, you've got Luke Littler, who's shooting the lights out since he was 16, 17, 18.

Michael Van Gerwen hit his peak in his late 20s, done really good stuff.

Then you have Phil Taylor, who was good from, God, from his maybe late 20s to, I would say, his early.

He was still good when he retired at, what, 55? You have the likes of Gary Anderson, who's about 55 or 56 now, still playing the darts of his life.

Good.

But I, I thought the Rob Cross one definitely w- 'cause that was not really against the grain, but that was when Van Gerwen was, was...

Everyone was going on about the Van Gerwen situation-

Yeah

...