Gary Anderson shoved rival, battled 'fartgate' and fumbled £80k all in one tournament

It's getting on for six years since Gary Anderson endured quite possibly the strangest tournament of his career at the 2018 Grand Slam of Darts.

At that point still one of the very best players in the world, the Flying Scotsman made it all the way to a fiery final against in which the pair almost came to blows on stage. But the weirdness began much earlier in the tournament.

Creating a dispute which could hardly be imagined in any other sporting arena, Anderson and his round-of-16 opponent Wesley Harms publicly blamed each other for creating 'rotten egg smells' during the match.

In a saga which became known as 'fartgate', Harms told Dutch media that it would take him two days to forget the smell after losing 10-2 in Wolverhampton. But Anderson was having none of it.

"If the boy thinks I've farted he's 1,010 per cent wrong," he told . "I had a bad stomach once on stage before and admitted it. So I'm not going to lie about farting on stage. Every time I walked past there was a waft of rotten eggs so that's why I was thinking it was him. If somebody has done that they need to see a doctor."

The fiasco caused quite the stir, with PDC boss Barry Hearn pouncing on an opportunity to declare that he and his colleagues would do everything in their power to 'get to the bottom of it', and he even questioned whether caller Russ Bray could be to blame.

Little did Anderson know there would be more drama to come. At 7-7 in a first-to-16-legs final, things started to get tense when he paused the match to give Price a talking-to.

Keen to show he would not be pushed around, Price hit a very average 95 with his next three darts and celebrated wildly in front of Anderson. When 'The Iceman' took out another leg before the break, he made a 'shush' signal behind Anderson's back as he walked off stage.

As the match entered its crucial stages, the simmering tension came within a whisker of boiling over. Price once again screamed in celebration right in front of Anderson, who sparked an angry reaction from the Welshman by shoving him away.

After almost squaring up on the big stage, Price somehow held his nerve to win 16-13 and clinch his first Grand Slam of Darts title. Anderson, who repeatedly mouthed the words 'unbelievable' during the contest, took an £80,000 prize money hit as Price went home with £150,000 and he had to settle for £70,000.