For the first time since Tony David returned to defend his title in 2003, the No.1 seed in this year’s Men’s Lakeside World Championship is an Australian. That top seed is Danny Porter.
Porter is top of the tree by virtue of being a regular at the business end of antipodean WDF events in 2024, winning five ranking titles and reaching another three finals. He’s heading into his second Lakeside appearance full of confidence.
“A lot of people have been talking about me being top seed. I’m just hoping I can do what Tony did 22 years ago and bring that championship home. We can’t control how people play against us but I know I’ll be playing my A-game.
“I didn’t play my best at Lakeside last year, not even close. This year, I’m feeling good. My game is more consistent, I’m more mentally prepared and I’m ready.”
Last year was the 46-year-old’s debut on the Lakeside stage. A series of strong results in 2023 got him into the WDF World Championship but his second trip out of Australia for darts ended early with a round defeat defeat to Arjan Konterman. They often say that you learn more in defeat than in victory and it’s seems true for Porter, whose debut spurred him on for the 2024 season.
“I couldn’t really afford to go last year but I knew I was going. So, I took out a loan. My partner came with me and we had a holiday as well because it’s not often we get to go to the other side of the world.
“If I’m honest, I wasn’t prepared for the game properly because it’s not often in Australia we get to play on a stage in front of close to a thousand people. Out in the practice room I couldn’t miss but then it didn’t happen on stage.
“When I came off stage, I turned to Kym Mitchell and Peter Machin in the practice room and said ‘I’m coming back here next year’. From that moment, that was my goal and that’s why I went to every WDF event in Australia this year. I even went to New Zealand for the Open and got runner-up. Getting back to Lakeside was the goal but to finish as No.1 seed was a shock.”
Porter points to that run in New Zealand as being the most significant result this year even though it didn’t end in title glory.
“They had 434 players for the New Zealand Open, so to make it past all of them to the final really proved to me how consistently and how well I can play. In Australia we don’t have those sorts of numbers, although the quality is high.”
Porter works as a welder-fabricator in South Australia, welding all day on boats, trailers and “all sorts of random things”. It’s work that requires a lot of preparation and that word was a common refrain when talking about Porter’s approach to Lakeside 2024. In that, and his reference to adjusting to the brightness of the stage lights, there are echoes of Tony David.
David admitted struggling with the lights on his debut but used them to his advantage in his preparation for 2002. He built an oche at home that had the same light configuration, so that he could adapt to the brightness and angles throughout his practice routines. While Porter hasn’t quite gone to those lengths, he’s clearly gone through a similar learning process.
“Over the last two years, I learned so much about darts, myself and my body, what to eat and what to drink. We have events in Australia that can last 12 hours, so you have to learn how to pace and manage yourself.
“It’s the same as Lakeside last year. The lights were probably a bit bright for me, especially as I’m not the tallest guy so I was looking up at them. But I know that now. I’ve been there and done it once, so this year I’m just turning up to play the best I can.
“As top seed I’ve got a target on my back for other players but I don’t look at it like that. There are 16 seeds and we can all play darts. To be fair, all 48 players can play darts, that’s why they’ve qualified. I just happened to go to a lot of events and won a lot.”
The fact that Porter is still learning almost 20 years into a competitive career is impressive. His first experience with the sport was playing with one of his friends while babysitting back in his native Tasmania at age 16, but he didn’t begin playing properly until his late 20s. Right from the off, Porter had a competitive edge to him.
“I moved away from Tasmania for a bit and then when I went back, I started up darts. I played for a football club at first and just went on from there.
“The club had three teams. The first night I played in the three team, then the next night they moved me up to the twos. By the third night, I was in the number one team - I just seemed to have a natural ability for it.”
Porter first made the Tasmania State team in 2008, encountering Simon Whitlock before his move to the PDC. He got a lot of encouragement from ‘The Wizard’ and also learned a lot from later Tasmania teams that put ‘The Demolisher’ alongside the Cadby family. It was Pat Orreal though that Porter identifies as the biggest influence on his game.
“I moved to Queensland for a year. At that time, I was only about a 22 average player. I met Pat and because neither of us were working, we practiced together for eight hours a day, every day, for a year. That took me to a 28-30 average and that was when I realised that I could be really good at the game.”
He made the move to South Australia 11 years ago and has been a regular on the darting scene there but his playing days almost came to an end seven years ago.
“My game dropped a bit when I first moved to South Australia but in 2016 I hit a 9-darter on the DPA circuit. The year after that, I broke my ankle and had pretty much four years off darts.
“I jumped over a fence at my house and my ankle just shattered. They actually wanted to amputate my ankle and I said no, but that meant I was bedridden for a year and a half. I ended up putting on a lot of weight and then needing to have weight-loss surgery. Through that I lost 54 kilos and haven’t looked back since.
“I won a load of stuff in 2022, which got me a deal with Cuesoul. They made me my own darts and since then, I’ve never looked back. My game keeps improving and my confidence keeps growing.”
After going through all of that, it’s clear that the development in Porter’s game over the last couple of years means a lot to him and puts him in good stead for this year’s trip to Lakeside.
He’s one of six Aussie men in this year’s World Championship and he’s on course to possibly meet one, Michael Cassar, in his opening game. Porter describes Cassar as a “very consistent, solid player” but says that if they meet, he’ll “treat it like any other game.”
Ahead of Lakeside, Porter will get his final preparation in at the Alice Springs Open. Offering one of the richest prizes in Australian darts, it’s a competition that Porter has won before.
“Alice Springs is a great competition, really well-run and with good prize money. There’s a big pot too for a nine-darter - I’ve not hit a competitive one since 2016 but I’ve come close a few times this year so I feel I’m due one. It’d be great to have that in my back pocket heading into Lakeside!”
Porter arrives in the UK the day before the 2024 WDF World Championships begin, with his opening game on Saturday, November 30th. Having smashed his objective for the 2024 season, he’s clear in his ambition for his second WDF World Championship appearance.
“My main goal is to win Lakeside. I want to win as many games as I can and go as far as I can in the tournament but I want to win it just like every other player. I’m feeling very confident and prepared this time, so I just hope that when I walk out on stage it all happens for me.”
