Mark Webester - feet on the ground

Not many places you will see a world champion finishing a plumbing apprectiship. Good on Mark, if all else fails he has that behind him. And if he is still playing darts for the fun of it, I think he will turn pro and do well. When the fun goes out of it that is where the practice becomes really really difficult.




Darts: World champ puts plumbing first - icWales

Darts: World champ puts plumbing first

Jan 20 2008 by Our Correspondent, Wales On Sunday

WALES’ latest world champion is determined to turn his back on a lucrative sporting future – in favour of student life and county battles in obscure social clubs.

Mark Webster stormed into the sporting limelight last week when he became Wales’ first world darts champion for 13 years.

But the 24-year-old from Denbigh has turned his back on a move to big-spending rivals PDC, insisting he will stay loyal to the British Darts Organisation and complete his studies to become a plumber.

So, instead of lining up against the likes of Phil Taylor, Raymond van Barneveld and fellow world champion in the PDC – whose schedule for the next year offers a prize pool of £4m – Webster will begin his reign as world champion today in a county match in the Forest of Dean.

“I don’t want to move to the PDC,” said Webster, who lines up alongside women’s world champion Anastasia Dobromyslova for Clwyd against Gloucestershire at the Oaklands Club in Cinderford – the first time both BDO world champions have lined up in the same county team.

“It’s very attractive with all the money they are pumping in, but I want to finish my plumbing course and get my qualification first.

“I’m three years into it and it would be a waste not to finish that. I’ve only got a year and a half left. I just want to carry on enjoying the sport because that’s what matters to me.”

Webster’s victory over Australian Simon Whitlock – which earned him £85,000 – made him the third Welshman to win the BDO title, after the successes of Leighton Rees in 1978 and Richie Burnett 13 years ago. And it comes just six years after the Manchester United fan – who lists Eric Bristow and Ryan Giggs as his sporting idols – took up the sport.

It also capped a remarkable year in which he won the Welsh Open, Welsh Classic and Canada Open, as well as being crowned both WDF Europe Cup and WDF World Cup singles champion.

That run has catapulted him to number one in the rankings and not surprisingly, the BDO are keen to keep him in their ranks.

not a lot to do with darts,but I thought it good for a laugh.

Scenes From The Battleground » Blog Archive » The Theory of Multiple Fitnesses

The Theory of Multiple Fitnesses

Posted by oldandrew on January 20, 2008

I am writing to inform any PE teachers reading this about a great new innovation in PE teaching. In the old days teachers tended to assume that the only way to learn football was to play it, and the only way to develop as a sprinter would be to do some running. Now we know that this is not how people learn.

Just as other subjects were changed by the discovery of Multiple Intelligences and the development of different Learning Styles, we can now make similar changes to PE teaching.

Scientists have discovered that there is no such thing as physical fitness. It turns out that instead of some people being fitter than others we all have Multiple Fitnesses. The Theory of Multiple Fitnesses has shown that people are better at some physical activities than others, which is something that nobody ever knew before. So for instance, a child may have one of eight fitnesses:

* Running-Really-Fast Fitness
* Lifting-Heavy-Things Fitness
* Jumping Fitness
* Ball-Games Fitness
* Running-Long-Distances fitness
* Dancing Fitness
* Swimming Fitness
* Playing-Darts Fitness

There may also be other fitnesses that can soon be added to the list once sports scientists have adequately researched them, such as Ass-Whooping Fitness and Drinking-Ten-Pints-And-Not-Throwing-Up Fitness.

We can assume that each of these Fitnesses has a corresponding learning style. So for instance a child with Running-Really-Fast Fitness will learn best by running away from their PE teacher screaming, a child with Lifting-Things Fitness will learn most if they are holding a 40kg weight, and a child with Dancing Fitness will learn more if they are wearing tights. As PE teachers we need to adjust our lesson planning each child’s individual learning style.

First we must identify their learning style. The most effective way to discover what physical abilities somebody has (a method we hope the Olympic selectors will switch to in the near future) is to give them a multiple-choice questionnaire about what they like doing, and then getting them to colour in a bar-chart. We can then split them into different classes based on their learning styles.

So for instance, in the old unscientific days we would have taught children to run the hundred metres by using the traditional method of getting them all to run for a hundred metres. Now we know better and can get them to run one hundred metres in a way suited to their individual learning style:

Students with a Running-Really-Fast Learning Style: These students will run from one end of the track to the other in the traditional fashion.

Students with a Lifting-Heavy-Things Learning Style: These will be expected to grunt heavily while running and have to carry a medicine ball.

Students with a Jumping Learning Style: students with this learning style will be expected to leap from one end of the track to the other.

Students with a Ball-Games Learning Style: These will be expected to dribble a football while they are running, and will be encouraged to go faster by the other students running up behind them and making sliding tackles.

Students with a Running-Long-Distances Learning Style: These students should mainly follow the traditional method, but the track will be located three miles away from the school.

Students with a Dancing Learning Style: They will be expected to run with a backing of Salsa music and will be expected to pirouette on the starting block.

Students with a Swimming Learning Style: This is a difficult one to organise, but we hope to be able to flood the athletics track before they run it.

Students with a Playing-Darts Learning Style: This is close to the traditional method, but the students will drink three pints of lager and eat a packet of pork-scratchings before they start.

Once these innovations have been followed by all schools across the country I confidently predict Britain will have unprecedented Olympic success. Our only worry is that they may be unsympathetic to the Dosing-Yourself-With-Anabolic-Steroids Learning Style our experts are currently researching.