Nathan Aspinall has called for darts fans to be banned for five years if they whistle at players and referee Huw Ware admits it is a difficult issue to deal with.
Crowds at the darts are loud and rowdy, with singing and chanting the norm, which players have no problem with.
However, the issue of fans loudly whistling when a player is throwing is a serious one, with the stars of the oche easily put off by a high-pitched noise as they chuck.
Aspinall feels it is such a serious darting crime that anyone caught whistling should not only be thrown out of the venue, but banned for years.
‘I think the people that get caught shouldn’t just get kicked out, they should get banned for say five years,’ Aspinall told The Sun.
‘Something where they’re going to feel the effects of what they’ve done.
‘Then, once a few of them start doing it, hopefully they’ll go: “I’m absolutely gutted, I can’t go to the darts, I got a five-year ban from whistling, trust me, don’t do it.”
‘I bet it might take a couple of years but maybe that could be something.
‘A lot of darts games are determined by the crowd. The standard is that close. Missing one dart at double 16 on a 109 could lose you that game.’
Top referee Ware, who took charge of last year’s World Championship final, says the way he deals with the issue depends on the tournament, the venue and the vibe of the crowd.
‘Sometimes when you’re up on the stage, you can gauge the feeling of the crowd and that informs my decision as to how to handle it,’ Ware told Metro.
‘The Grand Slam of darts, for example, there were some problems. It wasn’t whistling, actually, funny enough. It was just a couple of other issues that were going on in the crowd.
‘It was such a good crowd at the Grand Slam of Darts. They were all watching the darts. They were attentive. They were alert. They seemed knowledgeable about the game. So therefore, I felt confident that I could go on the microphone and stop the problem without necessarily causing a problem somewhere else or a bigger problem than what we initially started with.
‘But then there are other crowds, like at the Premier League, in big, huge arenas or at the World Darts Championships, where there’s a bit more of a mob mentality, if that makes sense.
‘I might turn around on the microphone and say, “stop whistling”. And they might. You might get lucky and they might. But then someone else will start over there. And then someone else will start over there. And then someone else. Then all of a sudden, you’ve got a bigger problem than what you initially started with.’
Ware does not think whistling in the crowd has been a major issue during the current tournament, but it has certainly occurred.
‘I had an instance a few days ago with Luke Woodhouse’s first round match,’ he explained. ‘Instead of saying something over the microphone, I went to the nearest security guard who was stood by the side of the stage and said to him, “Can we do something about this, please?” He said that they’re already looking for him. As referees, we look to security to do that.
‘But I must say, apart from that one match with Luke Woodhouse, I might be wrong, but I don’t think it’s been a huge issue. I think it’s actually been quite good so far.’
Ware assures fans that, while officials may sometimes look like they are just ignoring an issue, it will be their way of dealing with a certain crowd.
‘All of us referees, I can tell you, we all hate it,’ he said. ‘If it looks as if we’re doing nothing about it, it’s not because we condone it, it’s because we’re trying to manage the situation.
‘Sometimes the bloke might be whistling to try and get some attention and if you say, well, I’m not going to give you that attention, then he’ll stop. There’s different ways of handling it.’