‘I used to be girl who grew to become darts No1 in Eighties – they tried to ban me from taking part in matches’

Darts trailblazer Linda Duffy recalls her early days in the sport when men would routinely refuse to play against her and how she campaigned for more recognition for female players

Women’s darts stars of today owe a debt of gratitude to a trailblazer who wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.

Opportunities for female players today are plentiful, with reserved places at the PDC World Championship and the Grand Slam, along with the introduction of the PDC Women’s World Matchplay and the Women’s Series. The WDF World Championship at the Lakeside has long held a women’s tournament, with Beau Greaves, who has also graced the PDC World Championship and the Grand Slam, winning it for the last three years.

However, back in the 1970s, such opportunities were virtually non-existence due to the sexist attitudes of the era. They had to be fought for, with one woman in particular leading the battle for darting equality.

Linda Duffy (nee Batten) became the top female player of the 1980s, both only after a monumental battle away from the oche. Like most people at the time, a young Duffy started out playing in her local pub, The Windmill in Enfield, north London.

She had gone to watch her older brother, who was in the pub’s darts team. One night, she was invited to have a throw herself and stunned onlookers by proving to be rather good.

“After a few weeks, I started beating some of the darts team,” says Duffy, who features in the new Sky documentary series Darts Kings, which focuses on the sport’s legends of the 80s and 90s.

“They said, ‘you’re really good’ and it went from there. But it was not a straight-forward experience because this was around 1969, ’70. Women didn’t really go to pubs on their own. And women certainly didn’t play darts or the other pub games.

“So when I wanted to play in the darts team with the men, there were red flags flying everywhere. I often wasn’t allowed to play, so it was quite difficult in the early days.

“I was allowed to play in the [local] pub with my brother and the team. But whenever we went away [to other pubs], they would say, ‘what is she doing there?’. I used to chalk their matches and at the end of the night, some pubs would let me have a game but others would say, ‘no, she can’t play’.

“They [The Windmill] tried to sign me up to their darts team, even though there was nothing in the rules that said women couldn’t play, the people who ran the league said I wasn’t allowed to sign up.”

Duffy did get a chance when her pub entered a four-player team in a competition played around north London. She recalls: “When I turned up, some players said they didn’t want to play against a woman. There were no rules in that tournament to say I couldn’t play. We actually got to the finals with three other teams.”

That event, in 1976, gave Duffy her big break. She was spotted by Ollie Croft, the legendary darts administrator who founded the BDO, who invited her to play for London Ladies.

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Meanwhile, the stance on women playing in pub teams was beginning soften, albeit only slightly. Duffy says: “They had extraordinary meetings and decided they would allow each team to have one female player if they wanted to.

“It wasn’t long before I was beating all the top players in the league, and some of the men didn’t really like it. They sometimes wouldn’t shake hands or would turn their back on me.

“Instead of opening doors, that closed them again. But it just made me more determined to play. I was going to play, I was going to show them. Eventually, they let women play and then they started to have women’s leagues.”

Progress in terms of having big women’s tournaments was still frustratingly slow for Duffy and her peers, who included Maureen Flowers, Eric Bristow’s former girlfriend. They continued lobbying the BDO for more recognition.

“We were travelling to North America and Europe and seeing the ladies getting equal footing there,” says Duffy, 70, who is now a sports psychologist. “The BDO, who were supposed to be the home of darts, weren’t doing the same for their ladies.”

That pressure eventually paid off, although it came at a cost for Duffy. Having ruffled feathers at the BDO too much for their liking, she wasn’t picked to represent England at the new World Cup Singles in 1983, despite her status as the best player in the women’s game.

“On every metric, they should have been picking me. But I upset them and they didn’t pick me,” she insists. “By 1985, they had to pick me because I was leading the rankings by so much – and I ended up winning the event.”

Watch Dart Kings on Sky Documentaries and NOW.