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Each edition features an in-depth explainer on one of the week’s biggest tactical talking points, along with a few snippets of other curiosities I’ve spotted in recent matches. There’s even a Q&A section – your chance to weigh in on whatever nonsense has been going on lately.
This is a darts article. I appreciate that this is the Adam Clery Football Column, and that’s what you’re here for, and I promise this is at least football-adjacent, but if I don’t get the following thoughts out into the world somehow, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.
It’s also a pro-wrestling article, but we’ll get to that surreal diversion later on. For now, please just humour me on the darts stuff, and we’ll get to something resembling ‘searing footballing insight’ along the way. Scout’s honour.
Luke Littler is an 18-year-old prodigy who is redefining the very standard of the sport he plays. He arrived, seemingly out of nowhere, at 16 and promptly skipped the ‘promising youngster’ stage of his development. Early 2024, just three weeks after you heard his name for the very first time, he was in the final of the World Championships with a 4-2 lead, and the number one ranked player on the planet had to dig as deep as he physically could to stop him winning it.
Twelve months later, he was back and beat one of the sport’s all-time greats to become the youngest World Champion in history. Twelve months after that, he clawed his way through a Round of 16 match to a chorus of boos, before taking the microphone and telling a room of 5,000 people in Kermit the Frog costumes that his prize money comes directly out of their pockets.
Welcome, my friends, to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This is what we do here.
I think there’s an argument that Wayne Rooney has had maybe the most interesting life in human history. You’d think, of all the footballers in that conversation, that you’d have liked to live Beckham’s (global fame, pop-star girlfriend, more money than God) or Ronaldinho’s (all those Nike adverts, and then ending every single working day in a hot tub with six Brazilian women), but none have the peaks and troughs of Wayne Rooney.
He arrived, seemingly out of nowhere, at 16 and promptly skipped the ‘promising youngster’ stage of his development. Summer 2004, he looked like he was single-handedly dragging England to a shock European Championship win, before a broken foot in the quarter-finals saw them capitulate to Portugal.
Twelve months later, he had moved to Manchester United and was regarded as arguably the most promising young player in the world. Twelve months after that, he was at the World Cup, staring up at Horacio Elizondo’s outstretched arm as it brandished a red card, with both his reputation and his life about to change forever.
He was 20 years old when he was sent off in that quarter-final rerun against Portugal, and while the wink given to the bench by Cristiano Ronaldo ensured he’d be the pantomime villain of the piece, it largely defined Rooney as an England player for the rest of his career. He was ‘braindead’, ‘irresponsible’, ‘a thug’, and all the other easy tropes they level at anyone from a working-class background when they make an error in public.
It’s a well-trodden cliché by now, but there are two things intrinsic to the British idea of celebrity. First, that we have near-endless reserves of praise, encouragement, and love for someone on their way up. And second, that once you’ve made it to the top, you are then immediately brought back down with as much scorn and disdain as the nation can muster.
They “let it all go to their head”, “forget where they’ve come from” or “believe their own hype”, and such. It was written about Rooney then, Beckham before, and you’ve seen something similar about Andy Murray, Lewis Hamilton, Jessica Ennis, Rory McIlroy, Mo Farah, Tom Daley, and Emma Raducanu since. It’ll be Jude Bellingham next summer, but it’s Luke Littler now.
Sanity did feel at least partially restored at his next appearance. A comedy booing of his video package was followed swiftly by a crowd-wide outpouring of support as he demolished Krzysztof Ratajski. Which, I’ll tell you now, is not enough vowels for a 17-letter name. Likely by the time you read this, he’ll be into the final, but playing crowd-favourite Gary Anderson means it’s a slippery slope for his relationship with the punters.
What makes this story comically pertinent to this particular column is that, to an extent, football does sort of wish it was darts at the minute. If you’re seeing the emerging trend of treating players as brands separate from their clubs, and wondering what marketing trend is driving that, look no further than the oche. Sponsors, agents, hangers-on—they would all much prefer if you supported your favourite player rather than your local team, as it means there’s a stable and lucrative fan base that’ll remain in place beyond the contracts of their current clubs.
Billy Headers, the hot new striker selling a million kits at Man United, might look on top of the world today, but when his cruciate goes and he winds up on loan at Bury, will he still be able to charge £400k for a meet-and-greet? Unsure. But you go around any bar in the south end of the Netherlands, and you’ll still find people telling you Michael van Gerwen is the greatest of all time, and throwing on his trademark goblin green shirt when their league game rolls around.
The decimal points might be very different here, but the idea is the same. Cole Palmer’s team want to sell Cole Palmer to people who are massive fans of Cole Palmer rather than massive fans of Chelsea.
But the thing is – and if you’ve persisted reading this far, here’s your special treat, because it’s the most tangential thing I’m ever going to say – while football might wish it was darts… darts actually wishes it was pro-wrestling.
The pageantry, the drama, the larger-than-life characters with funny nicknames, the iconic walk-on music that’s half the reason people want to go and watch it in the first place. Luke Littler snapping live on stage and turning on a crowd that had supported his rise to the top is pure, undiluted script writing straight from page one of wrestling’s playbook. You can trust me on this one, by the way, as that’s exactly where I used to work before I got into football – and no, I won’t be expanding on that.
When you’ve got a new star that’s going right to the top, they can’t get there on the first try. You write their mercurial rise to get the fans invested, make them think they’ve got a hero on their hands, and then snatch it away at the death when they come up against the company’s top dog. Littler had to lose to Humphries in 2024 to make his eventual win in 2025 feel earned. It was a bigger deal, it made it taste sweeter to everyone who had to wait to see it, and it made him a much bigger star in the process.
But then you’re stuck. People get bored. You’ve taken your new hero right to the very top and, from there, you’re out of story-telling obstacles to keep his story interesting. Fans don’t pay their money year after year to cheer someone coasting through an era of dominance. You have to find something else they really want to see, and just like with the Rooney red card, the easiest plot twist is to have them brought crashing back down to earth in a manner their own actions have warranted.
He’s “let it all go to his head”, “forgot where he’s come from” and “believes his own hype”, and it’s part of our cultural DNA to now want to see them fail as a consequence. Luke Littler is still only 18, and doubtless struggling with just how quickly he’s had to go from complete obscurity to mega stardom. But ‘The Nuke’ is a character on a TV show, and reveling in his fall from grace is just as much of a reason to tune in as being inspired by his rise to the top. Both are great ways for a promoter to make money.
You’ve seen this play out in football with every single generational talent England has produced, and now you’re seeing it in the darts. That it’s an unavoidable consequence of the human condition is pretty grim, but the fact it’s also the narrative backbone of professional wrestling is pretty funny.
Also, despite what I said at the start, I was never actually in the Scouts, so that’s another betrayal for you. Booooooo!
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