THATCH OF THE DAY

Newcastle fan Rydz laughs off chants about his hair to reach the last eight

- MIKE WALTERS

CALLAN RYDZ harnessed crowd songs about his comb-over barnet to edge a hair-raising thriller against Rob Owen.

The Geordie form horse recovered from two sets down to beat the Iceland delivery driver from Bridgend to reach the Paddy Power PDC World Championship quarter-finals and admitted the noisy soundtrack inspired his fightback.

Rydz was struggling to get a foothold in the contest until the first mainly-English chorus line of the tournament - around 30 per cent of tickets were snapped up by Germans - piped up with refrains of "Callan Rydz, he's got s*** hair but we don't care" and "He's got a birds' nest on his head."