Indoor League

The Indoor League was a pub games competition series that was produced by Yorkshire Television and aired from 1972 until 1977. The programme was hosted by England cricketer Fred Trueman. The first series (1972) competition was first transmitted by ITV on Thursday 5 April 1973 at 1 pm and ran for the following 6 weeks. The TV Times magazine dated 31 March 1973 contains a one-and-a-half page editorial on featuring darting legend Tom Barrett. most of the competitions were filmed the previous year before transmission due to various edits that were made to the programmes. From series 2 onwards the Indoor League made their various competitions open to International competitors, and they played for the Indoor League World Championships.

Trueman often wore a cardigan whilst smoking a pipe throughout his links. He always ended the show with the phrase, "ah'll see thee".

The show featured many indoor games, the majority of which were pub games, each of which had a prize of £100 for the competition winners. The sports included darts, pool, bar billiards, bar skittles, table football (a.k.a. foosball), arm wrestling and shove ha'penny amongst others. Among the commentators was Dave Lanning and Keith Macklin.

The Indoor League was created by Sid Waddell, who also produced the series from 1972 to 1976. Darts coverage on television was in its infancy, with the News of the World Darts Championship having just begun to be broadcast on ITV in 1972. Waddell would later go on to become one of the voices of darts on television when the World Championship was created in 1978.

In the first series all dart matches were played on a Yorkshire dartboard that does not have any treble scoring segments. The competition was restricted to players form within the Yorkshire TV region, but due to the programme's success from the second series onwards the men's and ladies' darts competition was open to all players from around the globe and they played for the Indoor League World Darts Championships. In the final series there was also an International mixed darts tournament. The winner of the first competition received £100 with the runner-up getting £50.

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