Kirk Michael resident Kevin Lane contested the final stages of Professional Darts Corporation’s Q School event in Milton Keynes recently.
After qualifying outright on day two of the preliminary stages of the PDC event he went on to finish a respectable 71st in the order of merit, slightly below professional darts player Fallon Sherrock (64th).
Among those he finished above was TV pundit and three-time World Darts Champion John ‘Darth Maple’ Part of Canada (79th) .
Unfortunately, this wasn’t enough to see Lane - known to friends and family as ‘Blue’ – earn a prestigious tour card and entry to the pro-tour events that brought darting superheroes like teenager Luke Littler to our television screens over Christmas.
Lane had a good run on day three of the event, reaching the last 32 players and picking up one point. He looked set to earn more on day four, winning through to the last 64 in a 6-3 win against England’s Darryl Pilgrim.
After going 0-2 down in the match, Lane averaged a staggering 90.02 to ultimately leave Pilgrim in his wake.
The Kirk Michael man’s run was cut short in his next match against two-time BDO World Darts Champion Scott ‘Scotty 2 Hotty’ Waites in a disappointing 0-6 defeat.
More than 850 players competed in the 2024 PDC Qualifying Schools, at Milton Keynes and Kalkar in Germany, with 31 two-year tour cards on offer. Of those, 128 players took part in the UK Q School.
During the event filming was underway for a recently-commissioned three-part documentary entitled ‘Darts’ for Sky TV.
The film crew closely followed Lane through the preliminary rounds and the finals in order to show the journey players take to make it onto the big events such as the World Professional Darts Championship held at Alexandra Palace each December.
Lane now goes on to compete in the PDC Challenge Tour, taking in a total of 24 events over the year to hopefully earn himself another chance to win that coveted tour card.
The first five events took place over the weekend back at Milton Keynes. His progress can be followed at tv.dartconnect.com