Except for “Why are the numbers on a dartboard in the order that they are?” the question I am most often asked is “What is the derivation of the word ‘oche’?”: the word used in all major national and international darts rule books meaning the line behind which a darts player stands to throw his or her darts. Well, to start with, the word was not ‘oche’ but ‘hockey’.
Numerous theories abound about the origin of the word 'hockey'; the most popular of which links the throw-line with a West Country brewer named Hockey & Sons. The story goes something like this:
Many years ago when darts finally reached the south-west of England and began to oust skittles, there was confusion about what distance players should stand from the dartboard to throw their darts. Rather than merely agree a length of throw and mark the floor appropriately, the players argued over the distance until an unnamed genius suggested that three beer crates (the property of a brewery company named Hockey & Sons) be placed end-to-end on the floor directly under the dartboard and the distance marked with a chalk line. Each crate measured three feet long so the throw line measured nine feet.
Then, instead of calling it ‘the throw-line’ or ‘the line behind which darts must be thrust’, the players, for whatever reason I cannot imagine, decided to call it something else: but what? After much scratching of heads and disturbance of brain cells, one creative individual suggested, “Why not call it the ‘Hockey’ after the company that owns the beer crates?” This was then agreed by the whole company of darters and thus the name ‘hockey’ was born.
In addition one author gilded the ‘Hockey’ story by adding that a lazy darter who was measuring the hockey with three crates then forgot to remove the crates before the game commenced which resulted in the players forgetting that the crates were there and stubbing their feet against the crates as they went to retrieve their darts, effectively 'toeing the hockey'. How crazy is that?
The ‘Hockey & Sons’ story has been recorded and embellished in books on darts for many years; the brewery stated as being based in Dorset, although at least one author placed the company in Suffolk. According to a senior member of the Brewery History Society (BHS) no such brewery company has ever existed either in the West Country, the south west of England or East Anglia or for that matter anywhere else in Great Britain. I love the theory but it is absolute rubbish. The story is complete and utter nonsense, a pure, unadulterated fabrication, yet still you can find darts website after darts website quoting it as fact.
The theory that holds most water, from the Oxford English Dictionary’s point of view, is that 'hockey' is a corruption of the word 'hog-line' or 'hog-score', words that were used in the game of curling; a distance-line which a stone must cross to count, a word which made the transition from one pastime to another. That makes much more sense but here’s the true story.
The very first standardised rules for darts were produced in 1925 by the newly-formed National Darts Association (NDA) and these were used in the News of the World Individual Darts Championship from 1927 until 1990 when the competition was ‘suspended’. From 1925 and throughout the duration of the News of the World competition the original name for the throw line was ‘hockey’, not oche. Although it is not possible to say exactly where the word ‘hockey’ came from, it was being used in other traditional pub games, including Aunt Sally, a member of the skittles family, to mean the point from which the player throws. It is a simple process to transfer that word into use in another pub game, darts.
So when did ‘oche’ come into use and where did that word come from?
For nearly half a century the word ‘hockey’ was used but then it was changed to ‘oche’ in the early 1970s by the British Darts Organisation (BDO) or more accurately by the then Managing Director, Olly Croft (who was later to receive an OBE for his services to darts). In December 2011 during an interview with him at his home in north London Olly told me, “I introduced the word ‘oche’ you know”, adding, “I found the word which meant a groove in the ground and so used that.”
Indeed, there is a similar word in Old French which means a notch or nick and there have been claims of ‘oche’ being an Anglo-Saxon word for a groove in the ground but I can’t verify that although in Middle English there is the word 'ochen' which meant to cut or slash something. But ‘oche’ it has been since 1973 and so there’s no need to change it now whatever its true derivation.
Oche length
The actual distance of the hockey from a plumb line dropped from the face of the dartboard to the floor still varies from place to place in the UK and can be as close as six feet or as far away as ten feet. (I’ll have more to say about unusual oches/hockeys in a later article in this series.)
In News of the World tournaments prior to the Second World War the length of the hockey was 9 ft, although this was reduced 8 ft when the competition resumed in 1947. When the News of the World was reintroduced for one year only in 1997 the throw-line was set, according to the rules in the tournament programme, at 7 ft 9 inches; this despite the official world standard oche length being fixed at 7 ft 9 ¼ inches (2.37 metres) by the World Darts Federation (WDF) two decades earlier in 1977.
So that’s the story of the hockey/oche. There are a number of other, mainly suspect or strange, theories about the derivation of these words which can be found in the book I co-authored with Bobby George titled Scoring for Show, Doubles for Dough – Bobby George’s Darts Lingo which was published by Apex Publishing in June 2011. The book is available via Amazon.co.uk.
© 2012 Patrick Chaplin
For more fascinating darts facts visit Patrick’s website www.patrickchaplin.com. Also fans who would like to subscribe to his monthly free online Dr. Darts’ Newsletter can do so by simply e-mailing ‘Dr. Darts’ at patrick.chaplin@btinternet.com.
Patrick’s on-going darts research is sponsored by the WINMAU Dartboard Company (winmau.com)