Previous youngest World Darts Championship finalist before Luke Littler saw life 'fall apart' as warning sent

The previous youngest World Darts Championship finalist before Luke Littler says he struggled to cope with his newfound fame after the tournament - sending a major warning to future darts sensations about how to deal with it.

Littler reached the final of the 2024 World Championship just 19 days before his 17th birthday, beating Rob Cross 6-2 in a dominant display.

He will take on Luke Humphries in the final at Alexandra Palace on Wednesday evening.

And while his rise this tournament has been meteoric in terms of public profile, Littler has been making a major impression in the darting world for a number of years.

He won the World Youth Championship in November, and went into the tournament ranked at world number 164.

Ahead of the final, Littler has guaranteed himself £200,000, and has jumped inside the top 32.

That will set him up nicely ahead of a first full year on the Pro Tour in 2024, especially as he will not be 'defending' any of that prize money given that the professional tour is judged upon a two-year Order of Merit.

But things were slightly different for 21-year-old Kirk Shepherd, who produced an astonishing run to the 2008 World Championship final.

Unlike Littler, Shepherd had some experience of the Pro Tour before arriving at Alexandra Palace, but had no real success in his first 12 months.

His run to the final saw him defeat darting greats such as Terry Jenkins, Peter Manley and Wayne Mardle, although he survived match darts against him in some of those encounters.

Shepherd struggled to produce his best darts in the final and lost 7-2 to John Part, earning £50,000 as his runners-up prize.

While darts was extremely popular back then, the sport's profile has increased considerably in recent years - with 2008 being the first year that the World Championship was played at Alexandra Palace after moving out of the smaller Circus Tavern venue.

That final result was enough for Shepherd to qualify for the 2009 championship as the number 23 seed, despite another challenging year on the Pro Tour that didn't see him progress beyond round two in any other major.

And in speaking in an interview with the Daily Star, he revealed it was the huge prize money from the worlds that caused him to 'get carried away'.

He explained: "It was a fantastic run, one of the greatest weeks of my life.

"But I went from being a normal lad working in a factory to back-page headlines and a nice big pay cheque.

"After that, the devil came for me. I went a bit doo-lally and got carried away by it all.

"Much as I hate to admit it, I was gambling and turning to drink. I had no manager to straighten me out and I went off the rails. In hindsight, reaching that final at Ally Pally was too much, too soon."

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In the 2009 World Championship, he lost in the first round, being defeated 3-2 by Jan van de Rassel on a tiebreak.

He would go on to reach the third round the following year, off the back of a quarter final appearance at the US Open, before losing 4-1 to Mark Webster.

However, another first round defeat at the World Championship followed in 2011 - the last time, to date, that the now 37-year-old has played at the event.

The Swindon-born dartist eluded to his lack of experience, and lack of knowledge of how to deal with his newfound fame, as other key reasons behind his struggles moving forward.

He said: "I thought everything was going to fall on a plate for me and it was the start of a new beginning, a bright new dawn.

"But I stopped putting in the effort. I got lazy. From earning £50,000 as a runner-up and having some wealth, four years later I was living on my own in a flea-ridden one-bed flat.

"I went through a crazy phase because I had suddenly run into all this fame, and I didn't know how to deal with it.

"I'd gone from nowhere to a big final, without reaching the last 16 or quarter-finals of other competitions along the way, and I had nothing to fall back on by way of experience."

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Despite his subsequent lack of success, Shepherd did manage to stay on the tour for much of the next decade, successfully navigating Q-School on four separate occasions to retain his tour card.

He did reach the fourth round of the UK Open in 2017, but was never able to hit the heights of his infamous run in 2008.

Shepherd relinquished his tour card at the beginning of 2022 after suffering from dartitis - the sport's version of the 'yips' - when it came to releasing the dart.

Mardle, who lost to Shepherd in the semi-final that year - says that, despite his own lack of experience on the Pro Tour, Littler and other rising stars will not go the same way as the 2008 runner-up.

He told the Daily Star: "He [Shepherd] wasn't a professional darts player when he reached the final. He worked in a body shop. Darts was just a hobby that was paying a bit for him.

"The run he had was an outlier. He hadn't been reaching the final stages of majors. The Worlds was that one event where it went right for him.

"It's different now. There's hardly anyone now who is going to make the final without being experienced around the world of darts.

"I don't think there is anyone coming along and not understanding what they're getting into. Nowadays, there are professional people around the high-end amateurs, who will be getting better management advice than Kirk had."

Littler has a manager and strong inner circle around him, and has repeatedly credited his family for his incredible success at the age of just 16.

He takes on Luke Humphries tonight looking to make more history - but whatever happens, he has set up the perfect platform to move forward with in darts.