Daryl Gurney had just wrapped up a comfortable 6-1 victory over Polish qualifier Dawid Robak in the opening round of the Poland Darts Open and was mid-sentence in his post-match interview when something unexpected came sailing out of the crowd. An object landed on the stage at his feet, stopping proceedings dead. Both Gurney and PDC Europe presenter Philip Brzezinski looked down, momentarily baffled. A beat of confusion followed.
Then Gurney, barely missing a step, delivered the line.
“I think you have a phone call,” he told his interviewer.
Brzezinski, once he had gathered himself, confirmed what had just happened to the crowd at EXPO Kraków: an iPhone had been thrown onto the stage. The interview resumed, the incident was over in a matter of seconds, and Gurney’s dry wit had turned a potentially unsettling moment into a punchline. But while the Northern Irishman handled it with characteristic composure, the incident did not go unnoticed — and it did not sit entirely comfortably.
Throwing a phone onto a stage where players and broadcasters are standing is, in the most benign reading, a misguided piece of crowd banter. A smartphone is not a soft object. In any other context — a phone thrown at a performer, a referee, a player — it would be treated as something considerably more serious than a laugh. The fact that no one was hurt, and that Gurney turned it into a joke, does not resolve the underlying question of why it was thrown in the first place.
The incident adds to a growing conversation about fan behaviour in darts, one that has become impossible to ignore in the 2026 season. At the same event, Luke Humphries was subjected to sustained whistling and jeering from the partisan Polish crowd during his second-round match against Krzysztof Ratajski — enough to prompt referee Kirk Bevins to intervene and request calm from the stands. Humphries, who still won 6-5 despite being pegged back from 5-2 up, was candid about the effect it had on him. The atmosphere in Kraków was electric in the best sense for much of the weekend, but also volatile in ways that raised legitimate questions about where the line is.
For Gurney, the sporting side of the weekend presented its own challenges. His win over Robak — who was making his European Tour debut — was built on grit rather than quality, with a host of missed doubles threatening to let the local qualifier back in before Gurney eventually closed it out. He was in no doubt about what lay ahead in round two against Ross Smith, and took care not to be too complimentary in his pre-match assessment.
“Hopefully I don’t give him too many compliments and he thinks, ‘Oh, this is going to be easy, Daryl is waxing this’,” Gurney said with a grin. “Hopefully I am a lot better tomorrow and more consistent. I am looking forward to the game.”
He had reason for confidence in that match-up. His recent record against Smith on the European Tour was strong, and Gurney arrived in Poland in decent form after a solid 2025 campaign that included quarter-final runs at both the European Championship and the Players Championship Finals, as well as the World Cup triumph alongside Josh Rock. World No. 23 and rising, Gurney is a player who has learned to carry himself with the quiet authority of someone who has seen most things the sport can throw at him.
Even an iPhone landing at his feet, apparently.
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