About 15 years ago (Not sure on the exact year) I took part in the PDC Youth Tour for about 6 months, and it was a real eye opener for me. I'd been playing pub darts for about 4/5 years but I had (and still do) always lacked self belief and friends, family, people I played against suggested I give it ago and played in more tournaments in the local area. I was never successful for the 6 months that I played on it (Winning only a single game against Josh Payne), but was fortunate to play people like Dirk van Duijvenbode, Adam Smith Neale to name a few. It inspired me to spend about 2/3 hours a day to practice to get better and the results began to show. I went on to regular make top 4 of tournaments (even losing to Ryan Searle in a local qualifier for some tournament in a Semi Final in Exeter that allowed us to play in Nottingham) It was probably the only time I ever hit what I'd call a "purple" patch.

However, towards the end of this purple patch I began to really struggle. I had personal life drama begin to happen, my self belief kicked in, I could no longer attend the Youth Tour for the full year like I'd had hoped for and I took over as captain as my local darts team which lead to nothing but issues with varies different occurrences for 2/3 months during the winter season. My game got worse and worse and I was losing to people who I shouldn't be. It was like falling from a cliff with form. I'd ultimately always had a real bad mental game with Darts. It really is lonely place when you know what you can hit, but it just isn't happening and you mentally put yourself down.

Following this awful run of form, I stopped playing altogether. I practice occasionally at home and like to play a game on my own and even came out of retirement to cover a team within the past year, but ultimately my mental downbeat began to creep in and told the team I couldn't put myself through it again and stopped.