Which county is currently the strongest in UKDA darts?
The obvious way to answer that is to look at the league tables. Results ultimately decide promotion, relegation and championships, and nothing I produce here is intended to replace that.
But I wanted to ask a slightly different question.
Does a county's league position accurately reflect the strength of the players it has available?
And, perhaps more interestingly, are there counties further down the UKDA system whose underlying player strength suggests they could be capable of considerably more?
I decided to have a look.
How I measured county strength
I started with the league positions of the counties and then compared those with the strength of their leading players.
For each county I took the top eight men and top six women and ranked the counties according to the strength of those groups.
League position, men's strength and women's strength were each converted into ranking points, with 53 points available for first place down to one for 53rd.
That gave a maximum possible total of 159 points and produced my initial Q4QS County Strength Ranking.
But there was an obvious question.
What about depth?
Having several outstanding players is one thing. Having quality running throughout a county's player pool is something else entirely.
So I ran a second comparison using the whole available men's and women's squads.
That gives us three different ways of looking at a county:
League Performance – what is actually happening in competition.
Top-End Strength – the quality of the leading eight men and six women.
Squad Depth – how strong the wider player pool looks when we go beyond those leading names.
And that's where things became much more interesting.
Lancashire Set the Standard
There isn't much argument at the very top.
Lancashire are the benchmark.
They rank first in the league standings used for this analysis, first for top-player strength and first again when I consider the wider squad.
In the original 159-point calculation, Lancashire scored an extraordinary 157 out of a possible 159.
That's about as emphatic as it gets.
Sometimes a statistical exercise produces a surprise at No.1. This one doesn't.
Lancashire aren't being carried by a handful of exceptional players, nor does their player strength look better on paper than the results they're producing.
All three measures point in exactly the same direction.
Warwickshire and Lincolnshire also emerge among the major forces when league results and player quality are combined, while Glamorgan feature strongly when the wider playing squad is taken into consideration.
But once we move away from the very top, the rankings begin telling some much more unexpected stories.
Yorkshire Have Serious Depth
Yorkshire might be one of the best examples of why I wanted to add the whole-squad calculation.
They sit fifth on league position and 11th when I concentrate on their leading players.
Look at the whole player pool, however, and Yorkshire climb to second in the country.
Even more impressively, their wider men's strength ranks second and their women's strength also ranks second.
That's significant.
There is a difference between having enough very good players to put out a formidable leading side and having quality extending well beyond those first selections.
The numbers suggest Yorkshire have the latter.
Their leading-player ranking perhaps doesn't immediately scream second-strongest county, but their depth certainly does.
And depth matters over time.
Players become unavailable, form fluctuates and new players have to step forward. A county capable of replacing quality with quality is in a very different position from one heavily reliant on a relatively small group.
Are Clwyd On the Rise?
This was one of the results that initially made me want to investigate the rankings more closely.
Clwyd sit 28th in the league order used for this analysis.
Based purely on that, there would be little reason to identify them as one of the stronger counties.
The player data tells a very different story.
Their leading-player strength ranks 11th.
That's a remarkable 17 places higher than their league position.
Perhaps that was simply being driven by a handful of particularly strong players?
The whole-squad test says not entirely.
When I widen the calculation, Clwyd rank 20th – still eight places higher than their current league position.
The women's strength is particularly eye-catching. Clwyd's leading six women rank sixth, while their wider women's group ranks seventh.
There is more of a drop-off on the men's side, so I wouldn't describe Clwyd as possessing outstanding depth in every department.
But there is enough here to ask a legitimate question:
Could Clwyd be a county on the rise?
This analysis can't predict the future and I'm deliberately putting a question mark on that statement.
What it can tell us is that the quality of players available to Clwyd currently looks considerably better than 28th place might suggest.
Whether that strength eventually translates into results is the interesting part to watch.
Cheshire Could Be Another to Watch
Clwyd aren't alone.
Cheshire are 20th on league position, but 11th on leading-player strength and 14th when the wider squad is considered.
I actually find that consistency particularly interesting.
There isn't the dramatic difference between elite strength and depth that we see with some counties. Both measures simply suggest Cheshire possess a stronger player base than their current league position indicates.
That doesn't guarantee a climb.
League darts isn't played on a spreadsheet.
But if I'm looking for counties whose underlying numbers suggest potential to outperform their current position, Cheshire would certainly be on my list.
Further down, Cleveland also deserve a mention.
They're 38th in the league comparison, but 28th for top-player strength and 33rd on the whole-squad measure.
Nobody is suggesting that suddenly makes Cleveland a top-ten county, but both independent player-strength measures come out better than their current league position.
Those are exactly the discrepancies I'm interested in finding.
Humberside Show Why Depth Matters
Perhaps the biggest justification for carrying out the second calculation comes from Humberside.
Using only the leading eight men and six women, Humberside rank 31st.
Use the wider squad and they jump to 16th.
That's a 15-place difference.
Their men's numbers are particularly striking. Humberside rank 24th when only the leading eight are considered but rise to 11th across the wider men's pool.
In other words, their strength doesn't appear to be concentrated right at the top.
Hampshire produce another huge change.
They are 20th using the leading-player calculation but ninth when depth is included.
Their men's figures are even more unusual – 32nd based on the leading eight but ninth when the wider group is assessed.
Cornwall also improve substantially, moving from 18th on top-end strength to eighth on whole-squad strength.
There are similar, if smaller, patterns elsewhere.
Cambridgeshire improve from 35th to 25th, Kent from 33rd to 23rd and Devon from 36th to 27th.
It shows why judging a county purely by its biggest names doesn't necessarily tell us how healthy the playing pool underneath them really is.
What About the Top-Heavy Counties?
Of course, the calculation works in the other direction too.
Some counties look considerably stronger when I restrict the analysis to their leading players.
Northumberland rank 23rd on top-player strength but fall to 39th when the whole squad is considered.
Salopian move from 16th to 32nd.
Tyne & Wear go from 19th to 34th.
Then there's London.
London's leading-player strength ranks an impressive seventh, but their whole-squad ranking is 22nd.
Their leading women's group is particularly strong, ranking fifth, but that elite strength doesn't extend through the wider numbers to quite the same extent.
Suffolk are another fascinating case.
They rank fourth when I concentrate on their leading players but 15th on the whole-squad calculation.
Their top six women rank eighth, compared with 28th when the wider women's player pool is assessed.
None of that means these are weak counties.
Quite the opposite in several cases.
It simply suggests that their strength is currently more concentrated among the players at the top.
And that is something a normal league table can't show us.
Some Counties Are Punching Above Their Numbers
There's another side to this analysis that I think is equally important.
If some counties look stronger than their league positions suggest, there must also be counties achieving better results than their underlying player-strength rankings might predict.
Kent are a great example.
They rank 16th in the league comparison, but only 33rd based on their leading players and 23rd using the wider squad.
Whatever the reason, Kent are getting results considerably above the position suggested by one of those measures.
Sussex are perhaps even more impressive.
They sit ninth in the league, compared with 23rd on leading-player strength.
The whole-squad calculation improves their position considerably to 12th, suggesting depth is an important part of the story, but they're still performing above the raw strength measures.
Cambridgeshire show something similar: 22nd in league position, 35th for leading-player strength and 25th on the wider squad calculation.
I'd describe those counties as punching above their numbers rather than suggesting the rankings are somehow wrong.
Because that's an important distinction.
This Isn't an Alternative League Table
The more I've looked at these numbers, the more important I think this point becomes.
Results are results.
If a county is winning matches and another isn't, a player-strength calculation doesn't change that.
There are countless things that can influence county results: availability, selection, individual performances, strength across the A and B teams and simply producing your best darts when the points are at stake.
The UKDA National League itself is built around four teams – Men's A, Women's A, Men's B and Women's B – which is another reason why depth can matter so much across a season.
What this analysis gives us is something different.
It allows me to ask whether the results we're currently seeing are broadly in line with the strength of the player pool behind them.
For Lancashire, the answer is an emphatic yes.
For some others, the answer is far less straightforward.
The Counties I'll Be Watching
If I were looking for the biggest stories coming out of this first analysis, I'd probably put them into four groups.
The established powerhouses are led by Lancashire, with Warwickshire, Lincolnshire and Glamorgan among those showing serious strength.
The depth counties include Yorkshire, Humberside, Hampshire and Cornwall – counties whose wider playing strength looks particularly impressive once I move beyond the leading names.
Then there are the potential risers.
Clwyd are the obvious one. A county sitting 28th in league position but 11th for leading-player strength and 20th across the wider squad is worth watching.
Cheshire's 20th/11th/14th profile makes them another.
Cleveland are a more speculative example further down, but again their underlying player rankings are better than their league position.
And finally there are the counties getting more from their numbers, with Kent, Sussex and Cambridgeshire among those whose results deserve recognition.
What Comes Next?
This is a snapshot, and that's what makes the next stage potentially even more interesting.
I'll revisit the rankings as the season develops.
If Clwyd begin climbing, we'll be able to look back and see that there were already signs of underlying strength.
If they don't, that becomes an interesting question in itself.
Likewise, can the counties with outstanding depth turn that depth into results? Can those currently outperforming their player-strength numbers continue doing so?
One set of rankings can't answer those questions.
But it can give us a much better idea of which questions are worth asking.
And after combining results, leading-player quality and whole-squad depth, one conclusion is very difficult to argue with.
Right now, Lancashire are the county everyone else has to catch.
