There are certain moments in life when you suddenly realise things have got serious.
Your first mortgage. Your first child. The first time you make a noise when getting out of a chair.
Or, if you’re a darts player, the moment you find yourself casually discussing what song you’re going to walk out to at Alexandra Palace while thousands of people in fancy dress scream at you after consuming enough lager to tranquilise a family of elephants and their mate Frank the hippo.
Welcome to the rapidly changing world of Joe Hunt.
Hunt’s 2026 has gone from “hopefully I can get a few ProTour call-ups” to “Christ, I’d better start thinking about decent entrance tunes for December.” It has been one hell of a rise, but before getting onto the darts, the Tour Card chase and the terrifying prospect of television cameras discovering exactly what Joe does with his face between visits, I wanted to know a bit about the bloke himself.
FOUR KIDS, PALACE AND KNACKERED LEGS
Joe lives on the Isle of Wight, has a partner and four children, which immediately answers two questions: firstly, why professional darts probably feels relatively peaceful, and secondly, where does he keep his horse (car!).
“So, yep that’s right. I’m on the Isle of Wight. I’m not married, but I have a partner and we’ve got four kids. Outside of darts, one of my main hobbies is football and I’m a Crystal Palace fan. I used to play, but now it’s more about watching it because I can’t run around anymore!”
You and most darts players on that score Joe!
“I also like playing a bit of golf sometime. When I’m not on the oche, I’m very much a family guy. I love being at home, spending time with the kids and enjoying family days together.”
There is plenty to unpack there, but let’s start with Crystal Palace. Joe could have picked Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal or Real Madrid. Instead he supports Palace. You know that famous team on the Isle Of Man.
That said, my team Liverpool have lost to them a couple of times at Wembley recently. And I used to live a few hundred yards from Selhurst Park, so I do have a soft spot for the Eagles.
Football-playing days are apparently behind him because, in Joe’s own words, he “can’t run around anymore”. This is precisely the sort of career progression darts was invented for. Football requires cardiovascular fitness, repeated sprinting and functioning hamstrings. Darts requires you to stand approximately eight feet from a wall without falling over. Evolution has spoken.
Golf occasionally gets a look-in too, although with four kids, darts, Palace and a professional career developing at warp speed, I can only assume a round of golf now consists of Joe reaching the fourth tee before receiving a call from perspective sponsors.
Behind all that, though, he’s very much a family man. Home, the kids and family days matter. And when your working weekends increasingly involve trying to take £100,000 off some of the finest darts players on Earth, a family trip probably becomes rather good therapy.
PUB BOREDOM CREATED A MONSTER
Like so many darts stories, Joe’s didn’t begin inside a multimillion-pound academy with sports psychologists, nutritionists and somebody measuring the aerodynamic efficiency of his right elbow.
It started in his mum’s pub purely for something to do. Clearly this was long before the PlayStation age.
“Ha. It’s where I started throwing darts when I was younger, really just out of boredom. I’d be down in the bar throwing and I always felt like I could play.
“I think I started playing against the pub team when I was about 12 years old. I couldn’t actually play in the league until I was 13, but by then I was already beating them all!”
Imagine being a fully-grown pub-league darts player, arriving for your match after a hard day’s work, ordering a pint, chalking up and then getting absolutely leathered by the landlady’s 12-year-old son.
There is no dignified journey home from that.
You can tell your wife you lost 3-2. You can say the doubles deserted you. You can claim the board was crooked, the lighting was poor, or there was a power cut. Eventually, when the missus hears ‘young lad’, she’s still going to ask: “How old was he?”
“Twelve.”
Sleep on the sofa, Gary
Joe couldn’t officially play league darts until 13, by which stage presumably the local adult population had held several emergency meetings to see whether the age restriction could be raised to 37.
2026: WELL, THAT ESCALATED QUICKLY
Hunt came into this season hoping primarily for ProTour opportunities. Sensible. Modest. Get experience, learn the environment and see where it takes you.
Instead, the year appears to have grabbed him by the shirt and launched him towards televised PDC darts. Surprised how well it’s going mate?
“Yes and no. I felt like my main aim was just to get a few more ProTour call-ups and, if I didn’t get a Tour Card, to gain as much experience as possible. But obviously, being in the position I’m in now and having started the year really strongly has been a bit of a surprise.
“I think the biggest shock has been qualifying for the TV majors. The Players Championship Finals is confirmed and so are the Worlds. So yeah, you could definitely say the TV events have been a surprise!”
That’s quite a magnificent understatement.
Most people’s pleasant surprises involve finding a forgotten tenner in a coat pocket or discovering the petrol station has reduced the price of a Twix.
Joe’s surprise is qualifying for the bloody World Championship.
The important thing is that this hasn’t come from nowhere. He wanted those ProTour call-ups because that was the classroom. Get amongst Tour Card holders, learn what the standard feels like and discover whether your own game survives when the bloke on the next board is rattling in 12-darters as casually as you make toast.
It turns out Joe’s game survives rather well.
CAMERAS: THE WORLD’S MOST EXPENSIVE DISTRACTION
There is a massive difference between throwing darts in a pub and throwing them with a camera close enough to identify what you had for breakfast.
Joe admits becoming comfortable in the ProTour environment took time.
“Yeah, absolutely. I feel much more comfortable on the ProTour now. At first, it was a bit daunting. The first few games on stream were quite difficult because I wasn’t really concentrating on the darts as much as I should have been.
“I was more conscious of the cameras and thinking about my actions and what I was doing. It all takes a bit of time to get used to, but I definitely feel much more comfortable now.”
This is wonderfully relatable.
Forget your Luke’s, Gerwyn Price or Michael van Gerwen. Joe Hunt’s first major opponent on stream was Joe Hunt. A man in fairness, he should be quite familiar with.
Suddenly you’re thinking: What do I do after throwing a 60? Where are my hands? Do I always walk like that? Why did I make that face? Did the camera catch that? Oh shit, there’s another camera.
Meanwhile your opponent has just gone treble 20, treble 19, double 12 and you’re mentally reviewing your own television performance like a nervous contestant on Love Island.
The good news is that exposure normalises it. Cameras become furniture. Streams become matches. And the environment that initially felt intimidating starts feeling like somewhere you belong.
THE TOUR CARD QUESTION
The obvious destination is a PDC Tour Card. Should it not arrive through his Challenge Tour performances this season – and let’s call a spade a spade – it will, Hunt has absolutely no intention of sulking into his pillow and taking up competitive bowls.
“Yeah, I’ll definitely head to Q School again. If I don’t get a Tour Card, it just pushes me more and more to keep chasing this dream. I feel like, given the position I’m in now, it would be hard for me not to get a Tour Card. So yeah, hopefully I won’t need to go down that route, but if I do, I’ll be there.”
There is something increasingly strange about calling it a “dream”, because Joe is currently standing in the hallway of the dream wiping his shoes on the mat.
The Tour Card matters because it opens everything up wider. The ProTour becomes home rather than somewhere you occasionally visit. European Tour qualifiers appear on the menu. Opportunities multiply. And while the alternative circuits offer excellent darts and prize money, Joe is very clear about where he wants to be.
“I’ll attend Q School is need be because ultimately I want to play against the best players in the world. Obviously, that comes with sacrifices because it means we wouldn’t be playing MODUS, ADC, Challenge Tour or Vault events.
“But the main money and the biggest opportunities are on the ProTour, so I’d much rather have a Tour Card than be playing Vaults, MODUS or Challenge Tour. For me, that’s the obvious goal and the reason I want to go for it.”
In other words: thanks very much, but he’d quite like the job where you play the best players in the world for enormous amounts of money.
An outrageous career strategy.
Somebody alert LinkedIn.
AND THEN THERE’S ALLY PALLY…
Perhaps the most remarkable part of Hunt’s year is that he hasn’t really had time to sit down and process it.
“Yeah, the season has definitely exceeded my expectations and it just keeps surprising me. I haven’t really had the chance to sit back and look at what I’m actually doing because I’ve just kept going, so there’s been no time to dwell on it.
“I do have moments where I’ll sit there and think, ‘Blimey, I’m going to be on the big stage now, in front of the TV cameras and everything that comes with it.’
“But obviously, that’s exactly where I want to be, and the more I experience it, the more natural it feels being on the big stage.”
“Blimey, I’m going to be on the big stage” may be one of the most wonderfully British reactions imaginable to qualifying for the World Championship.
No screaming. No running naked down the street. No tattoo across the forehead.
Just a quiet sit down. Blimey. The most-stern of exclamations.
Because eventually Joe Hunt is going to walk onto that Ally Pally stage. The lights will hit. The crowd will roar. The cameras he once found distracting will be pointing straight at him. Somewhere on the Isle of Wight, a few blokes who remember beating – or more likely being beaten by – a 12-year-old in his mum’s pub will be staring at the television wondering how the hell this happened.
Which brings us to the really important issue.
The walk-on song.
COME ON JOE, WHAT’S THE SONG?
I tried. He isn’t telling us. Git! The selfish bastard.
“Yeah, as I said, Ally Pally is a dream that’s now come true. Have I got a walk-on song? Yes and no! I’ve got one that I can fall back on, but once I’ve got the rest of the Challenge Tour out of the way and we’re heading towards my first TV event on stage, I’ll have a proper look and see if I can find anything else.
“If not, I’ll stick with what I know. Either way, it’ll be a surprise for everyone watching because I’m definitely not revealing it to you! Cheers, mate. Bye!”
And with that, Hunt terminated the interview before I could employ advanced journalistic techniques such as asking him again, offering him a biscuit or threatening to suggest “Glad All Over” myself.
So the mystery remains.
But I did leave Joe something to ponder. A musing if you will by way of an absolute banger of a walk-on song. And when I say “banger”, I mean in terms of getting the crowd going – bigger than Mr Brightside and Titanium.
And what’s even better, Hunt won’t even need to sing or learn choreographed moves.
Sleep on it pal!
