During last weekend’s Dutch Darts Championship, the legendary referee George Noble announced that he would retire at the end of the year after the PDC WC of 2026.
This is now the second consecutive year that a legendary announcer will retire after Russ Bray has announced his retirement (except PDC World Series events) after the PDC WC 2024.
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George Noble’s great career
Noble has been referee games since the mid -1990s.
He became a PDC referee from 2007 and has done games almost the past two decades.
Noble, in particular, transferred 26 nine darters in his career, including seven at the PDC WC.
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Noble had the honor to name Brendan Dolan’s World Grand Prix Nine-Dart Finish, the first ever in the history of the World Grand Prix (double, double-out format).
Noble also called Raymond van Barneveld’s 2009 PDC WC Nine-Darter, the first in the history of Tournament Garter.
He called two nine-darters on the same night of the Premier League on three different occasions (Luke Humphries & Rob Cross 3/6/25, Gerwyn Price 2x 2/17/22 and Phil Taylor 2x 5/24/25).
The two nine-darts of Phil Taylor was a historic day, because both nines were in the same game, making him the first player who hit two nine-darters in the same game.
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The highest average he referred for a competition was 116.67.
Here is the number of tournaments he has referred to Majors:
| # of performances | Tournament |
| 17x | World Matchplay |
| 16x | Grand Slam from Darts |
| 18x | World Grand Prix |
| 19x | Uk open |
| 19x | Premier League |
| 18x | PDC World Championship |
Noble also announced that he did the referee matches on the European tour for the rest of 2025, after the Dutch Darts Championship this weekend.
We must expect that we will see more from Franz Engerer at European touring events in the future, because the PDC will be a referee for the time being.
So far, Franz has referred to six European touring events in 2025.
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