The Folkestone Premier League of Darts was born from an idea between a few of us to create a singles league based on the format of the PDC Premier League. Carl Booker, Mark Hodgkinson, Jon Milton, Terry Dunham and Chris Walsh were the founding members and were aiming to gather around 10 people to compete in a small league. We then started to hear of more and more people who were interested in this format so we held the start of the first season off to see just how many people wanted to join. Eventually, to our amazement we ended up with around 20 players. We decided that this would now need to be a 2 division league. Once we got ideas from paper to reality we realised this could be something brilliant. We made arrangements to find a location to play every week and were very pleased to secure The Radnor Park Bowls Club as our home. As numbers were higher than anticipated we realised extra equipment would be needed, luckily Mark is a dab hand at building and kindly made 2 stand alone boards with lighting. Once we finally got underway even more people had heard about us and wanted to join. Division 3 was then formed. A crucial and most appreciated contribution was made by Carl of an additional scoreboard and the means to have a practice board. This, with Terry taking on the admin, Jon taking control of treasury and along with Chris tracking weekly subs, we all pitched in with everything that needed doing to get The Folkestone Premier League off to a fantastic start!

 

At the time of writing this we have just completed an amazing first season which was beyond all of our original expectations, finished off with an excellent finals night which had a professional set up, including an MC, scorer and scoreboard screens all thanks to further contributions from Carl. Season 2 sees even more players joining The Folkestone Premier League and we could not be happier with the way things are going and would love to keep on growing further still.

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10/9/18

Just to keep you all up to date, we're currently in our 4th season and are now running 4 divisions. We've been able to update our equipment and now have a board for each division and a practice board set up, as well as electronic scorers and light rings. We don't mind saying it all looks very good and a little bit professional when we get going on a Wednesday night. Mark has also built a special set up for our finals night which has our advertising on as well as housing a TV for the scores. It's a fantastic piece of kit which just puts us out there a bit more with the standards we are setting. It also enabled us to be completely self sufficient and have no need to hire any equipment to make our finals nights as good as they are. Our "Board" has also increased, We now have Roger Homersham and Tony Suckling who joined during the third season and are important to the up keep and running of the league. Unfortunately Carl has stepped away from the league due to commitments elsewhere which includes playing Super League. We will always be grateful for his massive contribution in getting our league up and running. Thank you Carl. By no means are we perfect or have no problems but we aim (with the help of the players) to keep improving. We are also hoping to introduce a ladies league from next season. We've looked at it a couple of times before but now have had interest from some people. So fingers crossed we will be telling you about that soon.

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29/11/18

Another update for you all. We've just started season 5 and we're happy to announce that we are now running a ladies division. It currently has 8 players in but we would be happy to extend that possibly to 12 next season. Again Mark has done a fantastic job making another stand to allow the ladies to have their own board. We have some new players added this season so to all of those, welcome to the FPL.

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16/12/18

Just had another successful finals night. Everyone involved in the respective finals played brilliant and we've got some new champions lifting their league trophies this season. More 180's than last year and a couple of high checkouts as well. Also the first 170 checkout was hit this season by Jason Avery. Next season will see our first ladies final so good luck to all of them and of course good luck to all of the players. On another note, unfortunately Roger has stepped away from the "Board" for his own reasons. We'd all like to thank Roger for his contributions to the FPL.

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24/6/19

Season 5 has finished and we've got our first ladies winner in Liz Denby Well done to all the winners and to everyone that was involved. This season saw our highest accumulation of 180's and had more 100+ checkouts than any other season. Including another 170 from Jason Avery. Hopefully this is because the standard of darts being played is rising.  We're delighted to say that we are running at our full capacity of 60 players. This is 12 in each division including the ladies. Again we would like to welcome all of the new players and wish you all the best for the season. We have also welcomed Belinda Homersham to the "Board" to help with the Ladies division. So welcome Belinda.

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20/10/19

Yesterday we welcomed our first professional darts player to the FPL in Ross Smith. Ross is a local lad from the Deal area and is currently on the pro tour in the PDC. He came down and played pretty much most of our players in a one leg shootout. He did "lose" a couple of times but mostly showed his talent as he's a quality player. He also took some pictures with our players and signed some pictures. It was a fun night had by all and we'd like to thank Ross for coming down and say that he's welcome back in the future

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4/3/20

Season 6 was another successful one. We have some new names on some trophies. Some people have said that it was our best Finals Night to date. The finals themselves produced some of the best games we've had. Including Kev Foleys win against Luke Philpott which was full of action, drama and great darts. We also had our first Finals Night 170 checkout by Ross Godden against Jon Milton. That game was a cracker which went right down to the wire and Jon just edged it 10-9. Adam Connelly made it back to back titles with a win over Hayden Hindry and Martin McNeill beating Martin Randles in the Division 1 Final. Unfortunately we couldn't have our Ladies final on the night between Bonnie Cook and Sue Gladwin because Bonnie had an operation. All in all it was another great season and we'd like to thank everyone for continuing with us and good luck for the season ahead. Also Belinda has stepped away from the "Board" and her shoes have been filled by Sally Wilson. Thank you to Belinda and welcome to Sally

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2020

Well what can we say. Unfortunately we were hit by a global pandemic in the form of the Coronavirus (Covid 19) and unfortunately it was devastating for many people. 

We started Season 7 but only a few games in, the country was put into lockdown and we had to halt proceedings in March. We as a board kept up with Government guidelines and met up in an environment where we could socially distance and week after week thrashed out ways that we could possibly return in a safe way when we were able too. 

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27/8/20

We have now managed to play the Ladies final. It was won by Bonnie Cook who was able to overcome Sue Gladwin in their final. Unfortunately with the restrictions we could only have a small crowd which was pretty much all of the Ladies from their division. However it was great to be playing again and look forward to re starting the season.

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9/9/20

We are now back and playing. We are very strict with safety guidelines and have all the necessary precautions in place to keep everyone as safe as possible. Unfortunately some players have decide not to return because of overall concerns, which is understandable after the year we've had. However we are still going strong and will continue to do so. A massive thank you to the Radnor Park Bowls club for putting all of the safety guidelines in place and making sure we are good to go again and to the players for sticking with us and allowing the FPL to continue

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The Folkestone Premier League of Darts is completely non profit. All the money collected from weekly subs and football cards is used to pay for food each week, trophies and the entire finals night set up.

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None of this would have happened without the players so to everyone involved, a massive thank you for making The Folkestone Premier League of Darts what it is now.

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