Raymond van Barneveld relishes retirement ahead of penultimate tilt at PDC World Darts Championship

Exclusive interview: One of darts’ greatest is looking forward to a life beyond the sport. To time for holidays. Time with his wife. Time with the grandchildren. Time with the friends he still has and to mourn those he’s lost

(Getty)

Raymond van Barneveld’s voice is calm and unflustered, but in a way it only makes what he has to say so much more chilling. He’s casually listing all the friends of his who have died over the last year. “There was a manager for the national team,” he says. “I played so many years with him. And he fell in the street and died. A week later, his wife visited me at an exhibition, crying like hell.”

Then there was the close friend who passed away in August while van Barneveld was in a plane above Australia, where he was playing in the World Series of Darts. “I received a text message,” he remembers.

“It said: ‘Ray, tonight I’m going to sleep forever. I hope you have a fantastic life and do what you’re good at.’”

The reason he’s sharing all this, by the way, is to explain. On Monday night, van Barneveld will play his first-round match at the PDC World Championship, starting the one-year countdown on a professional career that took a small-time Dutch postman to the very pinnacle of the sport. And though his powers are still strong, he wants people to understand. Why, for all the joy darts has given him, he can’t put himself through it any longer.

Simply put: after three decades, he’s tired of not being there. The grandchildren are growing up. Birthday and wedding invitations have fallen by the wayside. Holidays have been promised and not taken. Last summer, while he was playing an exhibition tournament in Barnsley, his wife Silvia was the victim of an armed burglary at their house in The Hague. And over the last year, four of his close friends have died.

“You don’t even have the time to pay your respects and say goodbye and go to the funeral,” he says bitterly. “And everyone can say: well yeah Ray, but you earn money. Well, money isn’t everything. You just keep on going and going and going. But it will affect you. It’s enough.”

You feel strangely devastated listening to all this. Ever since van Barneveld emerged into our living rooms in the mid-1990s with his thin moustache, his fluid, unflappable throwing style and a picture of Barney Rubble embroidered onto his shirt, he’s provided some of the sport’s all-time great moments. The unforgettable PDC world final against Phil Taylor in 2007. The first ever nine-dart finish at Alexandra Palace in 2009. And more recently, the stunning double-header against Michael van Gerwen at the 2016 and 2017 world championships, by common consent two of the greatest world championship games ever played.

“For you, happy memories,” he says. “For me, not so. Well, not for the last four years. I’m not winning any competitions. Early wake-up calls. Late to bed. Handling defeat. Pleasure becomes frustrating. You know what you can do, but it’s not happening.”

Then there is his diabetes, with which he has been living for almost a decade and is now beginning to play havoc with his eyesight. “It’s hard,” he says. “I love food, and sometimes when you’re in the car for three or four hours, you eat a McDonalds or a KFC. And then there’s the stress factor. The next morning, you feel dizzy, your eyes are blurry, which means you have high blood sugar. Sometimes I wake up and my blood sugar level is 11. It’s supposed to be between four and seven. And you’re doing this two or three times a week.”

Van Barneveld is now 51 years old, and in recent years the full-time demands of being a professional darts player have begun to take their toll. It’s a global sport now, with a relentless schedule, and for those at the top, staying there is harder than it has ever been.

van Barneveld will retire at the end of the 2019 season (Getty)

“People are not aware, with all due respect, that one Premier League match – 20 minutes on stage – costs me three full days,” he says. “I have to travel on a Wednesday afternoon, then the whole of Thursday you’re in preparation, and then on Friday morning you’re travelling on to the Pro Tours, or you’re flying back home. You’re always away from home. You’re living in hotel rooms half your life.

“Of course the prize money is good. I think I earned £50,000 this year. But half that money goes to pay your flights and hotels, pay your manager, pay your food and drink. And if you’re not winning anything, you’ve done it all for nothing.”

You wonder if, on some level, van Barneveld isn’t doing himself a slight disservice. After all, despite his advancing years, the unprecedented expansion of the sport’s talent pool and his diabetes, he’s done exceptionally simply to endure for so long. “Some Dutch interviewer asked me the same question,” he says. “‘Ray, why are you so hard on yourself? You’re five times world champion, you’re class, you’re fantastic’.

“And I said: OK, I have a question for you. How many times was I in the world championship final?

“He said: ‘Well, er…’. But of course, you don’t remember. The runner-up is the first loser. I was there at the World Cup final in Johannesburg [in 2010]. I can still see Arjen Robben bearing down on goal like he’s going to score. But Holland lost, and nobody remembers them. I’m handling defeat every single week. And I can’t deal with it any more

van Barneveld has won almost every major title in the sport in his 31-year career (PA)

The thing is, van Barneveld would quite happily put up with the labours of the touring life if he were still winning. But he’s not. It’s been 12 years since his last world title, five years since his last major win, and unless he enjoys a good run at Alexandra Palace this year, the likelihood is he will drop out of the world’s top 16. For a five-time world champion reared on a diet of regular wins, that hurts.

“It’s very easy,” he says. “I’m a winner. I’ve lifted trophies my whole career. If I’m playing just for money, I lose concentration, I lose focus. The money is good. But you don’t have the time to spend it. Every single text message from friends: ‘Ray, we miss you. Where are you? England again? My god. When have you got time for us?’ If I go on holiday, I feel guilty. That’s not right.”

And so, 35 years after he first took up the game as an eager teenager in The Hague under the keen tutelage of his father, van Barneveld is putting his darts back in their case. He’s given himself one more year, two more tilts at the world title; he genuinely feels he has one more big trophy left in him, even if the competition seems to get more daunting every year. “All the players are so, so good at the moment,” he sighs. “Gary Anderson, Michael van Gerwen, Rob Cross, Peter Wright: all these guys are playing awesome darts. If you beat one, there’s another coming in the next round.”

But now he’s beginning to look beyond. A life of leisure, with the odd exhibition thrown in. A spot of TV punditry, if they’ll have him. Time for hobbies: you may not know that he’s a keen collector of Marvel figurines. He’s got more than 1,500. He’d love to go to some of the exhibitions and conventions in America. But he’s never had the time until now.

Time for holidays. Time with his wife. Time with the grandchildren. Time to spend with the friends he still has, and mourn the friends he’s lost. And for a man in his sixth decade, who’s achieved pretty much everything there is to achieve in his profession, it feels – strangely enough – like Raymond van Barneveld’s life may just be beginning.

The William Hill World Darts Championship will be broadcast on the Sky Sports Darts channel until January 1.