Clean-cut and slim-line is the modern man on the oche

Darts players ain't what they used to be. Ian O'Riordan discovered as he sampled the smoke-free and teetotal competitors at Citywest yesterday.

It's a quiet Tuesday night in the Citywest Hotel and without even remembering to bring words of wisdom from Hunter S or B Dylan to help fill what could be some very bare copy we begin to hear the thump on the dartboard, and the first round of the World Grand Prix begins.

It's one of the premier ranking events around, apparently, and over the next six days the finest 32 that the Professional Darts Corporation has to offer will play it out for a potential €170,000 in prize-money.

In sporting terms, though, the darts business has always been less beautiful than the rest. Sid Waddell once referred to Jockey Wilson as an athlete, but the only way a true sportsmen used to look at a darts player was down. Careers were either legendary or cut short through some unfortunate illness, like smoke-blindness or lip cancer.

Resting pints on their bellies, they had nicknames like The Keg and Silk Cut, and the happiness of winning was always compared to a cigar called Hamlet. Those who followed the game usually had problems of their own, but still adored the players as some kind of pure symbol for the lifestyle and values of the alcoholically- orientated.

Yes, the booze: up to 20 pints a session as standard, and while Jim Morrison might have laughed that off as a chaser it still meant they'd often approach the board like a cheap imitation of a drunken John Wayne. Mainly the darts business then was about playing around midnight in smoke-filled rooms lit by 25-watt bulbs.

Which was more or less true. But things are not like they were. Darts, like snooker and bowling and its other partners in crime, has cleaned up its act.

These days the silk darts shirts hang a lot looser on the players, and you won't find anything stronger than orange juice resting next to them. The fans still drink like fish, but most of the smoking is in the pressroom, and the players now have nicknames like The Natural and Bravedart.

Sky Sports are also in town for the week and from a distance the whole show resembles a movie set. To the left, Waddell sits in his wooden commentary box and shouts of those one-hundred- and-EIGHTIES and nine-dart finishes (that's cutting 501 in nine darts), and in between mostly gibberish.

The legends, though, have long been replaced and all the talk this week surrounds England's Phil Taylor. For 10 years now he's been world champion and a couple of months ago hit the first nine-dart finish on live TV - and earned £100,000.

Event sponsors Paddy Power are putting up the same award in euro for the first player to hit similar in Dublin. Taylor is probably the man to take it - and take Sunday's final as well.

The 42-year-old, who was discovered by Eric Bristow, may have lost in the first round here last year, but that was his first defeat in a major event in over two years.

For the first round we also get all the outsiders, like Ireland's Jack McKenna. At 60 his best years may be behind him - and he's played for 40 of them - but when he walks into the Citywest convention room the 1,000-or-so in attendance are on their feet.

Though McKenna rues the demise of darts as a pub game ("Sadly," he says, "the pubs don't need darts anymore") he still loves everything else about it. And against England's Cliff Lazarenko he treats us to the game of the night.

At one set each, and one game each, suddenly the man from Kildare is on the verge of a place in round two, and producing the first big shock of the week. Another leg for the Irishman and he's in front for the first time. And what's this? Gripping? A chance for McKenna, and he takes it. Double four, and the match. Wow. And next he meets Taylor.

Earlier in the night, Down's Paul Dillon fell to Rod Harrington. And though the boozers and the bellies may be gone there are characters left. Harrington says he spotted a butterfly on the stage, and that interrupted his game. "If I had a shotgun . . ."