The proof is in the chowder: Mussel power for new darts champ

Darts player and new North Island Masters champion James Fergusson tosses a dart at the Hastings Darts Association. Photo / Paul Taylor

The proof is in the chowder for Hastings darts player James Fergusson after scoring one of the biggest wins by a Hawke’s Bay player in the sport.

The 41-year-old won the North Island Masters at his club on April 30, his first national-ranking points tournament of the season, and probably his last, despite the fact he’d come from nowhere to suddenly rank No 31 after beating top national players Haupai Puha, of Canterbury, and Craig Brown, of Waihī, in the semifinal and final respectively.

He is, he says, just a “shed” player, who has won a lot of varying titles at the club, but is too tied up with the family - wife Cindy and their two children - and his job to do anything else with the darts apart from tossing a few with the mates every now and then.

Thus he entered the tournament only because it was being held in Hastings, and reckons he had an average morning in pool play - including two 3-0 losses - but scraped through to the top 16, thinking that’s about where his run would end, because he’d never before reached a quarter-final in a ranking tournament.

It was then he remembered the mussel chowder he’d had the day beforehand, after another average performance during the morning in the club’s “drawn pairs” tournament, put on for club players and the Masters tournament players who’d arrived early.

While he didn’t win the drawn pairs, he did win two out of three after the chowder at lunchtime, and says when faced with similar circumstances 24 hours later he thought he’d “give it a whirl”, going to the front of the queue and saying: “Where’s the chowder?”

In best-of-seven games he beat Wairarapa player Jonty Reede 4-1 in the quarter-final, then Puha 4-3 in the semifinal.

In a best-of-nine legs final, he was up 4-2 when Brown made a late charge and could have won, at 4-4 and going for a 170 finish.

Brown missed, but Fergusson came home on a 70 finish to claim the honours, saying he still doesn’t count himself as “good” at the game.

Fellow Hastings player Chris Field also made the quarter-finals, making it easily the most successful such tournament for the club that anyone could remember.

Fergusson had been playing at the club for 14 to 15 years, and was “dumbstruck for a week” after the success, but not so buoyed that he would start travelling to the national title events in other centres.

But he wouldn’t mind a bit more of the chowder, which he hadn’t tried before that weekend and is the pride and joy of Diana Waerea, who along with husband Tawhai is part of the backbone of the Hastings Darts Association, which has its rooms in Nelson St North, coincidentally at No 205 (a darts score).

“They do a lot for the club,” Fergusson said. “They do everything.”