LUKE LITTLER has fired back at rival Gian van Veen after a tense end to their Premier League clash on Thursday.
The Nuke, 19, lost 6-5 in Manchester and reacted angrily to Van Ven, 23, during a fiery deciding leg.
It was Littler’s first defeat in seven at Prem events after going back-to-back in Berlin and Dublin.
The young Brit missed darts for the match before annoying Van Veen with conduct at the oche.
Van Veen himself couldn’t checkout and stared down Littler before throwing his final dart, now not on a finish.
Littler’s response was to chuck his arms in the air towards Van Veen and then gee up the home crowd.
He missed two more match darts and mimed crying to the fans before Van Veen took home the quarter-final victory.
Littler stormed off the stage following a brief handshake and then went almost immediately to Instagram to make his point.
Uploading a screenshot of his PDC titles listed out on Wikipedia, Littler wrote: “goodnight godbless thankyou manchester”.
Littler then reposted quotes from Van Veen after the match calling him “out of order.”
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He simply put three crying with laughter face emojis over the top of Van Veen saying: “I see Luke celebrating because I missed and I feel like that’s not normal.
“Yes, you’re there for yourself, but don’t cheer when your opponent misses.
“Then I see him making cry baby signs towards me, which is just not done.
“He’s a fantastic darts player, but I feel like tonight his behaviour was out of order.”
Speaking afterwards, beaten World Championship finalist Van Veen – who lost to Littler at Ally Pally in January – also said: “From my perspective I missed the double 15 and I looked around.
“I was fuming with myself that I hit it on the inside. I looked around. He was celebrating me missing and I was like that is out of order.
“I was fuming about that. I don’t know he probably saw it and missed three darts at double seven.
“He looked at me like I was the problem. I was like I don’t know what I did wrong.
“He was celebrating me missing. That is out of order. He missed and I took it out, he’s probably fuming. That’s darts.
“That’s my perspective, probably his perspective is a different side of it.
“I love Luke to bits. He’s a fantastic player, he’s a fantastic guy for the sport as well.
“To see all the attention he has brought to the sport is phenomenal. But this is also part of it.
“Today was my day.”
Van Veen went on to reach the final after beating Josh Rock 6-3 in the semis.
He lost 6-2 to Gerwyn Price – who picked up his second overall night victory and his first since the second of the season in Antwerp.
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