Deel 3 Terry Henney en zijn team Luifel 1

Tijdens mijn onderzoek naar de geschiedenis van het darten in Den Haag en omstreken ben ik o.a. de naam Terry Henney tegengekomen. Via Google heb ik hem opgespoord in Spanje en van hem heb ik de volgende informatie ontvangen over de kampioen van de eerste acht seizoenen Luifel 1.

DARTS IN THE NETHERLANDS

Darts was first introduced to the Café de Luifel somewhere around the late sixties when a large contingent of English engineering draftsmen were imported to work at some of the Larger chemical engineering companies based in The Hague, Amsterdam and Rotterdam.

Such companies as Badger, Aramco and King Wilkinson in Den Haag, Comprimo in Amsterdam and Bechtel in Rotterdam (to name but a few) employed large numbers of these engineers who spent most of their free time in the local ‘hostelries’!

Many of the original guys to frequent the Luifel were from Manchester in the north of England, a town where darts was the next most favorite pastime to angling (fishing) and it wasn’t long before Wim Koek  jr. (proprietor of the Café de Luifel), was talked into having a Dartboard installed in his bar.

It is also worth mentioning that the Manchester influence was so strong in the early days that both Wim Koek and his then wife Mary, both learned to speak fluent English with a perfect NORTHERN accent!

Some of the Manchester lads are names that may well still be remembered: Jim Bevan, ‘Mac Macadam’, Geoff Kirkman and John Berry spring readily to mind. Also there were some well known ‘southerners’ (who through darts became ‘honorary Mancunians!’) such as Colin Miller and Jim Brown.

In the very beginning the nearest thing to a competition was the Saturday and Sunday games of Knock-out ‘Killer’ and ‘Mickey Mouse’ in the Café de Luifel where, for the cost of 1 Guilder per person per game, you could pit your skills against the best of the rest and after a long day at the Dartboard it was quite possible to walk away with enough Guilders to pay your bar bill for the entire weekend!!

Around about 1970 a fledgling darts competition began to take shape.

Initially centered only in Den Haag and surrounding areas the game began to gain popularity spread which of course resulted in inter-café matches being arranged.

Eventually, so many bars and Café’s began to take an interest, that the first league table was drawn up and organized (I think by Wim Koek and Geoff Kirkman, but of this fact I am not entirely sure).

At this time Wim Koek had only one team at the Luifel (called of course ‘The Luifel’) but after the first couple of seasons so many people wanted to play, (women included) that more teams had to be formed thus ‘Luifel 1’, ‘Luifel 2’, ‘Luifel 3’ and ‘Luifel Ladies’ came into being.

Similarly more bars and Café’s from farther afield wanted to join in, leading of course to the obvious need to divisionally separate this fast growing competition.

Also obvious at this time was the need to register the league with the Dutch sporting authorities in order to take part in and organize officially recognized competitions and Internationals.

And so The Nederland Darts Bond was formed.

As far as I can remember the Founder members and first officially elected NDB committee were as follows:-

Frans v/d Geest (President)……………..Owner of ‘Hotel v/d Geest’ Noordwijkerhout

Colin Brown (Treasurer)……………….. Employee, Patents Office, Rijswijk,

Ingrid Raith (Secretary) Dutch Girl (I think that was her Surname!) Capt Luifel    ‘Ladies 1’

Wim Koek    (Committee member)………Owner, Café de Luifel

Terry Henney (Committee member)……Engineering Draughtsman

Since that time NDB selected teams have represented The Netherlands in International matches against Belgium (its called ‘Vogelpik’ there!) European cup matches in various countries, World Cup matches (the first of which was in Australia!) etc, etc,

On a more personal level, I have represented The Netherlands in two international matches against Belgium, European cup matches in Denmark (Which I think was in 1978) and Wales in 1980, also the Winmau world Masters in 1976 and 1980.  I was Dutch National Champion in 1975 and runner up in 1980.

I formed the first Café de Luifel team (pre NDB) at the request of Wim Koek and subsequently won ‘the league’ in 1971 and 1972.

Teams were then made up from :-

Terry Henney (Capt) - Ronnie Watson, Charlie Fisher, John Berry, Eddie Eve, Nigel Greenm, Dave Blake and many others.

Interesting note: In those days many of us played with wooden darts, lead weighted with feathered flights until Ronnie Watson came on the scene with his big brass darts with white feathers slightly preceding the introduction of the Tungsten darts of today.

In 1973 I formed the first ‘Luifel 1’ team to play in the NDB  ‘Eredivisie’ Winning the championship for the following five consecutive years.

I will try to remember the team players for these years but it is entirely possible that the list will not be as accurate as I would like!

1973 Terry Henney (Capt.) – Ronnie Watson, Charlie Fisher, Terry Mottershead
1974 Terry Henney (Capt.) – Ronnie Watson, Charlie Fisher, Terry Mottershead, Dave Blake
1975 Terry Henney (Capt.) – Ronnie Watson, Charlie Fisher, Terry Mottershead, Peter Lee
1976 Terry Henney (Capt.) – Charlie Fisher, Terry Mottershead, Peter Lee, Lester Millard, John Hollamby
1977 Terry Henney (Capt.) – Charlie Fisher, Terry Mottershead, Peter Lee, Lester Millard, Roger Ryan(I would like to apologize in advance to any past team-mates for possible inaccuracies?)

In the year 1977 (I think) we also won the first NDB National Team championship held in Noordwijkerhout.

Finally in 1978 I opened my own ‘Darts oriented Bar’ in partnership with Ruud van t’Hart, (the first bar with multiple dartboards), the bar was called ‘DARTSVILLE’.

With respect to our former achievements I requested ‘lowest level entry dispensation’ from the NDB for my new team ‘DARTVILLAINS’ (which was to all intents and purposes the old Luifel 1!) and was granted immediate entry into the 2^nd Division of the league. We won the 2^nd division title at the first attempt and were promoted to the Eredivisie which we went on to win in1979.

1979/80 Dartvillains:  Terry Henney (Capt) – Peter Lee, Lester Millard, and Jimmy Cox

I finally returned to the UK in Late 1980 and have not played competitive darts since.

Some of our biggest rivals were:

Cosmos,
Staaten Café,
Klein Duimpje,
Cavalier Club
Ned Kelly
Scorer
Om de Hoek

Unfortunately after 30years many of the other names are just distant memories but I’m sure if you are still in contact with Jilles Vermaat,  who along with the Smith brothers and their father formed the team that were our strongest rivals and came nearest to dedfeating us, will be able to fill some blanks ( I know for a fact he used to play in the same team as Rob Scholten!).

Here are some pictures that may be of interest.

                                          Myself at the Congressgebouw (Den Haag). 

                                           Luifel I - Eredivisie kampionen 1973 to 1977
                    Terry henney, Terry Mottershead, Roger Ryan and Charlie fisher

I hope the above will be of some help in piecing together the history of darts in the Netherlands and if anything else comes to mind I will be sure to let you know.

Best Regards
Terry Henney