They finally knocked it down. The Hardshaw Centre, that is. Another pile of rubble in St Helens town centre, joining the old bus station and neighbouring shopping units. It’s part of a “regeneration process” which, for the time being, has left the town centre desolate.
You can choose to see St Helens as a bleak place. For three years running it was labelled the country’s suicide capital. It was recently ranked as the 29th most deprived local authority in the country, with a quarter of its neighbourhoods “highly deprived”. Some — including where I went to school — sit in the 99th percentile.
But people from St Helens know better than to stake their identity in the victim narrative of the post-industrial hellhole. Ask anyone about the town and they won’t begin with deprivation indices. They’ll talk about the Saints, arguably the best rugby league team of all time — both for men and women. Or they’ll talk about the darts, and the roster of world-class players we’ve produced: Steve “The Bullet” Bunting, Michael “Bully Boy” Smith, Dave “Chizzy” Chisnall and, of course, Luke “The Nuke” Littler.
In a town accustomed to demolition notices and redevelopment plans, sport is undergoing its own form of regeneration. The St Helens Darts Academy is crowded with children most evenings. Saints Women continue to collect silverware with matter-of-fact relentlessness. And inside St Helens’ pubs and clubhouses, it isn’t just pride that’s being restored. It’s hope, too.
“It’s unlikely we’ll see another Littler for a long time, but we’re not finished yet,” says Karl Holden, the man behind St Helens Darts Academy, where Luke Littler cut his teeth. “We’ve got one lad — he’s 17 — and he got to the semi-final in the World Youth, against some of the best players in the world.”
It’s a freezing Monday night in the Sidac Social Club in Sutton, and there are at least 100 people in the function room. Parents queue at the hatch bar for pints, pies and full-fat Cokes, while kids as young as six line up in front of ten coloured dartboards. Proper St Helens, this is.
From the back of the room, I watch a tiny boy in a Jonny Clayton T-shirt scamper after his darts. He hops onto a small blue step and snatches them back from the board. On the table next to me, a man uses a dart to slash open a box of leftover Christmas crackers brought over by a woman called Dawn.
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