Today marks the beginning of the Darts Oceania masters tournament, hosted in Auckland.
The tournament is a chance for players from Aotearoa and Australia to find a place at the World Darts Championships and Māori competing in the tournament are showing they are up there with the best.
New Zealand representative and Māori darts hero Ben Robb says the level of new talent is a great thing for New Zealand darts.
“The more I look around, the more I see young Māori boys coming out and having a crack. We’ve got 14-year-olds out here having a crack and they truly believe they can win, because they can see their big brothers up there having a crack.”
One of the younger players in the tournament is 16-year-old Aliki Quinn-Suaesi from Tauranga, throwing darts alongside his idols. Aliki is rising through the ranks, sitting at No. 4 in Aotearoa for his age group. And his journey on this path began with one of his biggest supporters.
“It all started with my nan playing darts. She used to play at a club in Papamoa. We would go over there with her, play with her, play with the club sometimes. After that we started to go to more competitions, yeah, she was my biggest supporter, my nan.”
And playing alongside some of the current Māori greats is no small feat either.
“Coming here to play like Ben Robb and Haupai and all of them - it feels great,” Quinn-Suaesi says.
Contingents from Australia and across Aotearoa have gathered at the Howick Club in East Auckland, battling it out in the Oceania Darts Masters tournament. It’s a stairway to the biggest darts event, the World Darts Championship in England.
Robb who has already qualified for the championships is excited to see who will accompany him in representing Oceania.
“I’m super stoked to get back there. It’ll make me the most capped player at the Ally Pally for New Zealand too. So yeah it’s special, especially for my family and my wife and my kids. It’s pretty cool.”
Meanwhile, 24-year-old Invercargill native, Kayden Milne has only recently returned from the PDC World Youth Championships where he placed 14th in the world.
He says a trip to the famed Ally Pally would be a dream come true.
“I think that’s every darts player’s dream is playing in the world champs, at the Ally Pally. It’s iconic. It would just be a dream come true for me, a dream since I was a kid. You know, I’ve been playing since I was a little fulla. So it’d be a massive dream come true for me,” Milne says.
The tournament will finish on Sunday with the individual competition, to see who will join Ben Robb at the World Darts Championships.
“We’ve lifted the bar to a standard now where, if you beat us, then you belong on the world stage. Just stoked to be in that legend.”