Meatloaf famously coined the line, “two out of three ain’t bad”, and for Stephen Bunting, that perfectly epitomises the feeling after both recent pro-tours.

After shooting blanks in Friday’s two Euro Tour qualifiers, the Bullet reloaded and fired again – this time hitting quite a few targets.

Make no mistake about it, Bunting is currently throwing some excellent darts. And whilst the results aren’t always reflecting the performances, he is certainly on the right path.

Averages don’t always guarantee wins. However, over the Lakeside champ’s six matches at the two Players Championship events in Wigan, his lowest figure was 96.10. Chuck in three scores of over 100 and two 99’s on top of that and it makes very positive reading indeed.

Day one, let’s call it Saturday because it was, saw the Liverpudlian begin with two assertive 6-3 victories.

First off, Bunting got the better of Richie Edhouse before inflicting the exact same damage on Simon Whitlock – both wins weighed in at just over the 100 mark on the average scales.

However, Stephen then ran in to arguably the player of the day, Damon Heta in his board final. In what was a high quality encounter, it was the Aussie who got past the post first in a thrilling 6-4 encounter.

Onto Sunday and Boris Koltsov was effortlessly dispatched in game one. The Russian simply had no answer as Bunting cruised to a 6-0 win.

Up next was a potentially explosive clash between the Bullet and the Bomb – namely Ron Meulenkamp. On this occasion, the Dutchman failed to detonate and Stephen comfortably ran out a 6-2 victor.

In the board final, Bunting can consider himself extremely unlucky. Himself and Rob Cross went punch for punch for ten legs before the Voltage nicked the last leg decider in a battle of the former world champions.

At the end of a long weekend, Stephen said: “I am satisfied with how the two days went. You can see from the averages that my game is clearly there – I just have to turn that into more wins now.

“I gave a really good showing in the two games I lost. Rob [Cross] and Damon [Heta] played extremely well but I matched them in both games and they could have gone either way.

“With Mark Dean now in my corner, I feel things are going extremely well. My confidence is high and I’m playing some good stuff. The results will come and hopefully more PDC titles.

Bunting returns to competitive action next month as he heads to Minehead for the UK Open.