'No one likes to pay a parking fine, you know?': James Wade jokes on whether £100,000 softens blow of expensive family dayout

James Wade has never been one to mince his words — and after an exhausting 2025 World Matchplay semi-final win, he didn’t hold back. The 2018 champion booked his place in a seventh Matchplay final after a gruelling and chaotic contest, leaving him, in his own words, “absolutely bamboozled” and exhausted.

“It’s my own fault, really,” Wade admitted with typical bluntness. “I probably should’ve closed it off earlier — five or six legs before. But it is what it is. Just happy I won.”

The match, a rollercoaster against Jonny Clayton, saw Wade hanging on at 16–16 before surviving a late barrage from the Welshman — including a jaw-dropping 161 checkout that had the Winter Gardens crowd on its feet. “Stupidity and ignorance,” Wade grinned when asked where he found the mental strength to withstand it. “I’m just happy to win, you know. Really, really lucky. But that was a big mess.”

Even by Wade’s standards, the effort it took was monumental. “Not very often I walk off a game of darts and feel it. We all say, ‘Oh, I’m tired,’ but I am genuinely absolutely bamboozled after that."

And yet, he found a way. That internal stubbornness — what he calls “desperation rankings” — once again kicked in. “You’re stubborn, you want to win. Let’s be honest, Jonny probably should’ve won that game, but I should’ve won it way before,” he reflected. “I was just praying for him to miss that last finish. He pinned a load of them and I just thought, ‘Just miss one of them — let me have a little poke.’”

Worth the exhaustion for Wade

Now, Wade has the chance to join an elite club of multiple-time World Matchplay champions. When asked what it would mean to lift the trophy again, he kept things grounded. “No more different than what they all mean to me,” he shrugged. “But to do it in front of my family — my wife, my two sons — that’d be pretty special. You don’t normally get to take the trophy home, but apparently you can today. So that’s extra enthusiasm.”

There was little interest in who he might face in the final — whether Josh Rock or Luke Littler. “Don’t really care,” he said flatly. After what he’d just come through, it wasn’t surprising.

Even the £100,000 guaranteed payday wasn’t lifting the weight of the effort just yet especially given his recent travails with paying £57 for fish and chips. “Money doesn’t get to it,” he said. “No one likes to pay a parking fine, do they? But yeah… it’s a good sum of money, isn’t it?”

Wade's humour may have stayed intact, but it was clear that what he’d just been through had drained him more than most matches in his two-decade career. “It’s hard to comprehend and feel what I’m feeling,” he said. “It’s not very often I smile — but I’m genuinely smiling.”