DARTS FEATURE: A serious car crash and a debilitating illness have failed to stop this Co Meath battler

HE REMEMBERS it all right. It was 1995. Mick McGowan was 21 and it was a regular day. He was driving his car. The road was narrow, too narrow for a truck driving that fast. Those few ferocious seconds seemed to warp into minutes. The noise was awful: brakes wailing like murder, a hellish clanging, the deep, dull thud of the roof above him buckling. Then it was over, and there was a truck lying on top of his car.

“It seemed to last about half an hour because you could see it coming and I didn’t know where the truck was going to land. You think, ‘Is this it, like?’ It was very, very frightening.

“Luckily I was able to scramble out the back door, where the truck hadn’t come down. I’d some serious back trouble which put me out of darts for two and a half years. I’d an operation to get a disc removed.”

If there are moments around which some lives pivot, that car accident was Mick McGowan’s. It might have ended an ascendant darts career. It might have ended a lot more. The crash knocked him flat. Recovery was a slow, steep climb, a business of inches.

“I wasn’t at the standard I had been at before when I came back. My style of throwing had to change. I used to play with an arched back, and when I came back I was much straighter. With a disc missing from my back I couldn’t put the same strain on it. I had to learn a slightly different stance. It’s like starting all over again in a sense. It was something I just had to be patient with and not push. You’ve got to believe what you’re doing is right and eventually it’ll come through right.”

Eventually it did. McGowan has been among the top 50 ranked PDC (Professional Darts Corporation) players in the world for the past three years. He has been in the top 30 for a good chunk of that time too. He competes in the World Grand Prix (October 5th to 11th), a major PDC tournament, at Citywest in Dublin next month.

The path that led him here began in Duleek, Co Meath, where he grew up. Home had a sound: the thunk-thunk-thunking of cork yielding to darts. His father and two older brothers played. He followed, of course. He was playing local league games against men as a primary school kid. It was unfair, really. The men had feelings too and losing to an 11-year-old was a real killer.

“When I was 11, I won the Duleek and District Darts League. I actually beat one of my brothers in the final. He was 20 or 21 at the time. From the age of 12 I was playing senior county darts.

“I went to a Meath v Westmeath match one day. My two brothers were playing. They were 12-a-side games and, fortunately for me, Meath were short a player. So, they put me in last. They were 6-5 down and I won the last game to get a draw.”

The McGowan kid was a conjurer, pulling magic numbers from thin air. Treble 20. One hundred and eighty. Double 20. Put him seven feet, nine and a quarter inches from a dartboard and the arrows rained home, describing little arcs of perfection.

He started picking on people his own size, became Irish youths champion. He had a senior national title before he could vote, captained Ireland just after he could. Then the car crash, and the sweet straight trajectory of his career was jarred and sent plunging.

Mick McGowan is Meath, though, and Meath is guts and grit if it’s anything. He was never a footballer, but he grew up with Seán Boylan’s successful teams shadowing his own progress.

He relates to their spirit; they could play, and they could scrap. Two-and-a-half years was a long time watching the clock tick down to the day he could return to the oche. His teeth were clenched for the challenge. Still, he could not help but feel tentative.

It took a while but one day it happened. He threw a nine-dart finish at a tournament in Kilkenny, roughly the equivalent of a 147 break in snooker, although rarer. He buried every single dart of the nine. It was surgical, a perfect profusion of trebles. And a double top to finish, like a red sliver of cherry icing the cake.

His subsequent decision to join the UK-based PDC effectively excluded him from playing in most Irish tournaments due to the ill-feeling between the elite PDC and grassroots-based BDO (British Darts Organisation). “Unfortunately, the way darts is, under the INDO (Irish National Darts Organisation) system, which is linked to the BDO, I was pretty much banned from playing in any Irish ranking tournaments. A lot of people did question my decision, and say, ‘Are you crazy; you’re giving up being able to play in lots of tournaments around Ireland to go over and probably get beaten most weeks?’ But since I was seven or eight I’d always wanted to play against the top pros. I kept faith in my own ability and thankfully it hasn’t worked out too badly.”

He dipped his toe in for the first few years. By 2006, he was immersed in the professional circuit: the hot glare of TV lights, flight-hotel-flight, crowds, microphones, pantomime announcers, walk-on music ( One Way Or Anotherby Blondie), Sky Sports and all that jazz. It was the best year of his career. He won his first pro tournament, the Irish Open, followed closely by another, the Vauxhall Classic, held in England. He enjoyed the rare distinction of defeating Phil Taylor, world number one since around the time Noah was gathering the animals.

He hit 25 in the world rankings early in 2007. Then things began to slide a little.

“I was averaging well over 100 in most matches on the tour in 2006 and probably only Phil (Taylor)and Ray Barneveld were doing that. Going into 2007, there was a lot of talk about me and I probably didn’t cope with the pressure as well as I should have. It was something new to me.

“Up to this, I’d been enjoying myself. Nobody was talking about me. Nobody was expecting anything of you. I was just doing my own thing. But all of a sudden, papers were on to it, everybody was talking. I had a few defeats and I started to not enjoy the game. All of a sudden I had this pressure on me, although to be fair, it was probably mostly self-inflicted. I lost confidence.”

The fizz of 2006 was gone and it all went flat for a while. Something else was happening, though. A stale heaviness settled on him from somewhere. He was chronically tired. His joints crackled in pain like kindling trod upon. He was in the grip of something and it wasn’t letting go.

Last year he was diagnosed as having haemochromatosis, a genetic disorder characterised by excessive iron in the blood.

“It obviously did affect my darts. I don’t like making excuses for losing. Last year I did find it hard to put the practice hours in, though. I was just always tired and had these aches and pains. Nothing seemed to be getting rid of it. Thank God, this year I’m feeling pretty good, having got the treatment.”

Practice has been great lately. Three hours a day, religiously, and always a tortuous stretch of that spent circling the board by pin-point, sniping at doubles until he has picked off a 100, five of each number. Aiming for a double is, after all, the moment of millimetres at which matches are won or lost.

He exited in the first round of last year’s World Grand Prix at Citywest. He is healthier and sharper this year and his hopes are high. “I was disappointed. I didn’t play anywhere near as well as I would have liked. It gives me something to go back and put right this year.

“I’ve played in all the TV majors now and Citywest has a special place in my heart, because it’s a home venue. Last year was my first year qualifying and I can’t wait to get back this year.

“I’m very confident. I couldn’t be happier with how practice is going. It’s just about getting it right on the big day. I just have to be a bit patient with it.”

Family and friends will support him there, including some of the boys from Duleek, where he still plays in the local league he won at 11. It keeps him grounded, getting a good, thorough slagging now and then.

He’ll lose the odd match there, the cue for some dubious claims of world domination by whoever beat the man who once defeated Phil Taylor. Mick McGowan just laughs his easy laugh.

“It’s about as different from PDC tournaments as you could imagine. I don’t mean that in a bad way at all. It’s much more fun.

“You don’t have the pressure. Guys really want to turn you over when you play local league matches. But it’s something I enjoy, something I’ve done for years. I still love it.”

Youngest captain of the Irish team

Mick McGowan (36) grew up in Duleek, Co Meath.

He became Irish senior darts champion at 17 and was the youngest captain of the Irish team, at 18.

Having recovered from a serious car accident, which threatened to end his career, he began competing in Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) tournaments in 2004.

In 2006, he entered the full PDC circuit, winning two ranking competitions, The Irish Open and The Vauxhall Classic.

He rose to his highest PDC world ranking (25) in early 2007.

He competes in the PDC World Grand Prix (October 5th to 11th) at Citywest in Dublin.

McGowan works as a transport manager for a haulage firm and lives in Balbriggan.

He is married and has one daughter.