Luke Littler has revealed Gian van Veen effectively gave up at the end of his feisty Premier League Darts match in Manchester earlier this month, which led to him calling his opponent a “cry baby”.Van Veen won a controversial match in early April where Littler reacted angrily after his opponent turned towards him when throwing match darts in a dramatic deciding leg.
The Dutchman told Sky Sports that Littler was “out of order” for “celebrating towards the crowd” which caused him to stare at Littler, who went on to miss match darts at double himself before losing the contest.
However, Littler spoke about the incident from his perspective for the first time ahead of this week’s Premier League Darts in Rotterdam, live on Sky Sports on Thursday from 6pm – where the pair could meet in the semi-finals.”What other people didn’t see was, as I’ve walked back around, I’m still looking that way [to the crowd] and he’s put his darts down but no one sees that,” he told Online Darts.
“I think he’s the one who’s not doing his job, obviously being respectful. I think that’s the first-ever time I’ve seen someone put their darts down in front of my face.
“I was like, ‘why?’ And obviously I come inside, I called him a cry baby because there was no need for it. There was no need for him to put his darts down. When he won, I picked my darts up and I said, ‘well done, you got the win’.”
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Highlights of Littler’s quarter-final clash with Van Veen in Manchester
Littler also stated there was “no need” for Van Veen to stare at him when he still had not thrown his three darts.He added: “From my point of view, I’m looking up at the TV, I’m just thinking in my head, ‘he’s not going to miss. Even if he gets a shot at the bullseye, Gian’s one of the best bull hitters in the game’.”
“When he came inside the double 15, I looked up, had a drink of my water, and then I did a little fist bump towards Faith (Littler’s girlfriend) and her dad. That’s when the fans started screaming, so I was like ‘come on’ to them.”But then there was no need for Gian to look back and stare at me. He’s still got a dart in hand, so really he should just step back, look at the floor, and then throw his last dart.”So he’s staring at me,…
2026-04-13 14:10:00
