In what may be the most bizarre, ill-tempered final to a major championship in any sport, let alone Darts, Gerwyn Price took home his first major title at the Grand Slam of Darts.

Following a blue-print he had stuck to for most of the week in Wolverhampton, Price spent most of the match turning to the crowd to scream and shout in celebration after any decent throw, taking a minute at the oche to ponder a bad throw while his opponent waited and generally doing all he can to wind up himself, his opponent and the crowd.

The way Price behaved on stage in the final proved there is such a thing as not just a bad winner but a truly obnoxious one. At one point the Welshman celebrated a mediocre sub 100 score louder and more over the top than Dimiti Van Den Bergh celebrated a Nine dart finish earlier in the tournament.

Price got what he wanted. He got his trophy, his prize money and has established himself as the pantomime villain, just in time for the World Championships next month. In the long term though, Price’s tactics last night could be ruinous, not just for himself but for Darts as a whole.

In the final against Gary Anderson, Price was booed before, during and after the match, even as he was hurriedly handed the Eric Bristow trophy. All the talk afterwards was about the antics, not the darts themselves a bad precedent to set going into the sports biggest tournament.

An even worse precedent is that this all happened in the final of a tournament that had in its early stages invited members of the junior divisions of the sport to come and watch. What kind of message does Price’s victory send to them?

At his worst Price acted like a bully, using his obvious physical presence compared to his opponents to intimidate them, showing a total lack of respect to other players, the officials and the crowd. Letting him get away with it and carry on doing it sends a message that the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) will tolerate such behaviour in the younger divisions.

The Worlds will now be a test for Price. The crowd at Alexandra Palace will be hostile to say the least, while any opponent that comes up against him will be aware of his antics at the Grand Slam and will desperately want to inflict a humiliating defeat on the Welshman.

The bigger question is whether Price carries on as he did in Wolverhampton at Ally Pally, with a far bigger prize on offer and a far bigger audience, both at the venue and on television watching, to turn against him at the first sign of an unwarranted “COME ON”.

As noted by Wayne Mardle on Sky Sports after the final, Price is using his physicality and presence as a weapon on stage. The Welshman is a former Rugby player but is now in a sport where technical ability and mental arithmetic are far more important than physicality and fitness.

Darts players don’t need to be super fit and the age range is much wider than in other sports, with younger players coming through on the youth tour while elder-statesmen – such as Anderson who is 47 and not the oldest competitor out there- have been around for several decades.

In the early rounds of the Worlds, Price is likely to come up against people far lower in the rankings, possibly even players who have come through qualifiers. This could include players from the youth tour, who are between 16 and 23-years-old or either of the two female qualifiers.

If Price reverts to his tactics in a match against a far younger player or one of the female pros, the image that Darts has worked on for so long to improve could be set back years. The PDC needs to step in and stop its biggest tournament descending into the kind of chaotic farce as the Grand Slam did.