Rising darts star Alan ‘Chuck’ Norris is a lifelong Blue, even if the start of his allegiance was a little unorthodox...
I started following the Blues in 1981 when Primark opened in Yeovil and my mum bought me and my brother a duvet cover – he got a Liverpool one and I got City – it was the start of 30 years of pain! I’ve supported the Blues ever since.
We lost the FA Cup final that year against Spurs so it goes without saying I hope we get the result we need against them on Sunday. Yeovil Town were my local team and I went to school in Huish which is near the stadium but once I got that duvet cover, I was a City fan and stuck with them ever since.
I then moved to Plymouth and the only time I could get to see City was when we played away to Aston Villa as some of my mates were Villa fans and I could get on the Villa bus to Birmingham. I remember Niall Quinn scoring on one occasion and I jumped up on my own, a few feet away from the Holte End but I was sat with my mates and even though I had my City shirt on, I was OK – probably because we lost 3-1.
That was my first game and I moved to Spain through work for four years and then Sweden for another eight years and during my time there, Sven took over at City and I got to see all the Swedish friendlies
I’ve played darts since I was nine years-old and I think I was probably at my best when I was 16 but women, drink and work became a distraction and I lost my way a bit. My dad was a Yeovil league champion at darts in 1977 and my granddad was a good player, too – they could play with their right or left hand whereas I just concentrated on my right and it’s worked out better for me.
Nowadays, I practice every day and work really hard at it now it’s my job. I moved from the BDO to the PDC after my first season and that’s been really good for me and I got the Best Newcomer award in 2015 – when I saw the award I told them they’d misprinted the trophy and that it should have read ‘Oldest Newcomer’ being 43!
I’ve played Lakeside for seven or eight years on the trot now and made the final there, too, so things have been going fairly well. As for my nickname, I was lumbered with Chick Norris from an early age and I sort of lost it when I went to Sweden, but when I started playing competitively, Liverpool fans Robbie Green and Steve Bunting said ‘It’s got to be Chuck!’ so I just sighed and went with it.
I have strict rules that say I can’t put Chuck Norris on my shirt and I can’t relate to it too much because of legal reasons with the actor’s representatives. I tried to explain that it was because a darts player chucks the arrows and that I didn’t expect 80 martial arts experts to turn up at my games as a result but that’s where we are.
My fans know I’m a City fan and sing the Yaya/Kolo Toure song and I’m like ‘hold on, I’m trying to play darts, here!’ Maybe I should get the City badge on my shirts in future – Robbie has liver birds on his so we’ll see.
I’ll be up this weekend for Sunday’s game and I hope we do better than we did against Leicester. I missed that game as I was taking part in the UK Open qualifiers but I wasn’t happy that day. We’ve blown hot and cold all season so I don’t know what to expect against Spurs. We need a win, I know that much but it will be a tricky game.
I’m getting quite a few selfie requests at the Etihad these days which shows there are a lot of City fans who like darts and I’ve heard Kelechi Iheanacho likes his darts, too so maybe we can set up a game in the near future.
