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1 week ago
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Nathan Aspinall earned his first nightly win of this year’s Premier League, fighting back to beat Luke Humphries 6-4 in the final on home turf in Manchester.
Stockport native Aspinall moved up to fourth in the standings after a dramatic night of action at the AO Arena. Humphries defeated Luke Littler in his semi-final, after the world champion overcame a stunning nine-darter from Gerwyn Price in his opener.
Price has proved to be Littler’s bogey player, winning their last six games, but Littler eased into a 5-1 lead in their quarter-final. Price thrilled the crowd with the fourth nine-darter of this season’s Premier League, checking out 141 with a treble 19, treble 20 and double 12 to claim his set of 18-carat gold darts – but Littler won 6-3.
That set up a semi-final against world No 1 Humphries, who thrashed Stephen Bunting 6-1 with an average of 118.43, the third-highest in Premier League history. Littler missed double 10 three times to blow the opening leg as Humphries took a 2-0 lead.
Littler almost hit a nine-darter of his own in the third leg, missing badly on double 12, and went 3-2 up before another costly error opened the door for his rival to advance to the final, winning 6-3 despite a lower average than Littler (93.80 to 96.63).
On the other side of the draw, Aspinall saw off Rob Cross 6-2 in his opening match before winning by the same scoreline against Michael van Gerwen, who was still feeling the effects of a bizarre shoulder injury he gave himself when trying on shirts last week.
Come the final, Humphries raced into a 3-0 lead but Aspinall reeled off the next five before a ragged end to the contest. “The Asp” began the 10th leg with six perfect darts, but then missed five match doubles – and watched in agony as Humphries almost took out 170 to level the game again.
Aspinall finally nailed double four to win the night in front of an adoring home crowd. “I had a feeling I was going to make the final a couple of days ago,” Aspinall said. “To come out on top is an amazing feeling.
“I’ve never felt that nervous at the end. It was the most nervous six or seven darts I’ve ever thrown. I just wanted to win so much for this crowd, the support they’ve given me the last few years has been amazing and they came out in their thousands to support me, I wanted to win for them.
“Luckily he missed a 170 and I won,” the 33-year-old added. “It was the perfect final for me to win wasn’t it? It wasn’t comfortable. I went 3-0 down and I came back to win 6-4. That’s my career isn’t it?”
Littler stays top of the standings with 28 points after 10 rounds, five points clear of Humphries, while the win lifts Aspinall into the top four, level with Price on 15 points.
