Been pretty quiet since the World Cup (that lay England suggestion went well, didn't it?), but there's been a few things happening so let's go through them.
First thing is Barney being announced for one of the World Seniors events. Now this one caught pretty much everybody out, and while I've seen the reasoning for him being in it given (he asked the PDC to play in it and they said yes), I do wonder why exactly the PDC are alright with it. This is a former world champion *of theirs* who is still doing enough to qualify for major events (he's in the Matchplay by £5k from Smith right now - if he just plays to his seeding in the remaining two Pro Tours that'll be £8k that Smith would need to find, more than £10k for anyone else, and would also need Joyce to overtake him), so clearly does have some marketing value for the PDC. This isn't, say, Brendan Dolan or Ian White getting the nod, no disrespect to them. Frankly, the only thing I can think of is that Barney's spoken with Porter behind the scenes, said that this is going to be his last season (he is 58 now after all), and will be handing in his card post-Ally Pally, and that as such, they don't have any sort of long term business relationship, so the PDC'll let him play other things and bill the next six months as some sort of farewell tour. That's just speculation on my part for sure, but I'm struggling to think of any other reasoning there could be - particularly if RvB tried to force Porter's hand and say he'll just resign his card now if you say no, although giving up the best part of fifty grand's worth of major prize money he's currently lined up for would be a pretty costly thing to do, so I don't think that would ever be realistic. Of course, I completely misread it in the first instance, and thought he'd got the invite for their world championship - not one of the run of the mill events. Here's my question to you though - if the PDC said "ok, everyone over 45 has carte blanche to play in these", is Barney even a favourite right now to get into the quarter finals of any given event? Anderson, Wright, Clayton and Ratajski I think are all clearly better. Gilding and Sedlacek are close. Then there's a few like Dolan, Suljovic, White, Vandenbogaerde and maybe some others that would be very clearly live, and that's before you get to those who are already on their circuit outside the PDC system, and those we haven't seen yet (Krcmar's playing well enough in 2025 that he could do a lot of damage, for example). Heck, Chizzy would be eligible in a few months. Could it be that Barney's looking to get what he can from the seniors before he's simply not good enough to compete in it? We'll see.
Then we've got the worlds criteria being announced. I think this has generally gone down well, although they took their time about doing it. Let's look at the changes and discuss, I'll go through in terms of general categories with what's changed:
Top 32 OOM and top 32 Pro Tour OOM > Top 40 OOM and top 40 Pro Tour OOM (+16) - these are fine. I don't think anyone thought for one minute all 32 spots would go to international qualifiers, but I was guessing more like they'd up the Pro Tour to 40 and leave the main order of merit spots as it is. That said, this does address a lot of the backlash they got about things like the Euro Tour changes and cutting back of opportunities for those lower down the rankings. Clearly not all of the 40 on the Pro Tour will be card holders, but this should make well over 60% of the card holders in any given year reach the worlds. Which is nice.
World Youth Champion & 1-2 of Development Tour > World Youth Champion & 1-3 of Development Tour (+1) - absolutely fine. I think most people assumed that some of the slots would be filled by expansion of the secondary tour positions. The tour is more than strong enough to warrant an additional spot, even given that a lot of the top names are card holders.
1-2 of Challenge Tour > 1-3 of Challenge Tour (+1) - also fine. Top end of this is always pretty stacked, some of them will clearly get in through the Pro Tour list, Labanauskas looking pretty much a lock for a spot there, but again, clearly good enough.
Women's Matchplay Champion & 1-2 of Women's Series > Women's Matchplay Champion & 1-3 of Women's Series (+1) - here I'm not so sure. I am not sure that the field is strong enough in the women's game to warrant a fourth spot right now, especially if Greaves (and others) opt to play Lakeside instead, and Greaves would be taking one of the Dev Tour spots instead anyway (and, going forward, likely the same if she does win a tour card and move to the Pro Tour full time). Granted, the numbers are worse because of the level of the field, but the averages aren't pretty and I think the status quo could and should have been maintained here. There's a reason why I don't include any data from here in my database.
Steel Darts Japan Winner, China Championship Winner, 1-4 of Asian Tour, 1-2 of Asian Championship, Indian Qualifier > Steel Darts Japan Winner, China Championship Winner, 1-5 of Asian Tour, 1-2 of Asian Championship, Indian Qualifier (+1) - again, fine. Area seems strong enough to warrant this many, adding an extra spot to the established tour seems the most sensible thing to do, although perhaps an alternative would be to host an additional country-specific qualifier to have precedence over the Asian Tour spot. A Philippines qualifier, for example, would seem to me to be a much better use of a spot than any of the three country-specific events they are hosting. I'd rather them have done that and made it 5 from the Asian Tour after all others are done than making it four from the women's game.
DPA Pro Tour Champion, Oceanic Masters Winner, DPNZ Qualifier > ANZ Premier League Winner, ADA Tour Winner, DPA Pro Tour Winner, DPNZ Pro Tour Winner (+1) - a sensible increase. I'm not sure I'm liking the idea of having two competing tours each providing a spot, and I'm not really sure what the ADA is, but the Oceanic region is good enough for an extra spot. I don't know what this means for the Oceanic Masters - it's essentially been replaced by the new regional Premier League, and giving it based on a series of events rather than just whoever might have run good on the day might give you a better quality of qualifier, but it is a fair bit of a downgrade for what was a fairly important event. Unless it's been cancelled going forwards and nobody's mentioned it, the area does seem to run its media based on pages that look like they were made on Geocities so that's entirely possible.
CDC Top American, CDC Top Canadian, CDC Next Best Player > CDC Top American, CDC Top Canadian, NA Championship Winner, CDC Continental Cup Winner, CDC Cross Border Challenge Winner (+2) - this seems a little bit of a weird way to do it. For whatever reason, I cannot find the first post the PDC made with their criteria for last year, so I am not sure if the spot there was for the NA Championship that Campbell couldn't use shifted to the main CDC rankings or just went elsewhere, I'm going to guess the former as otherwise it would kind of not be an increase. That they appear to be adding it to a one off event rather than their existing league is a bit of a weird one, making it three spots that may be decided this way, maybe they just can't work out which is their most prestigious event.
1-2 of SDC > Nordic and Baltic Championship Winner, 1-2 of SDC (+1) - again, fine, if they're setting up a new event, which they are doing with this Nordic championship, then adding a worlds spot to give it a bit of added prestige from the get go seems sensible enough.
East Europe Qualifier > SE Europe Qualifier, Czechia Qualifier, Polish Qualifier, Hungarian Super League Winner (+3) - now this is a huge increase. I do wonder if this is a placeholder series of events in lieu of them announcing a new regional secondary tour, which I think the area could certainly support, they're holding Euro Tour qualifiers already anyway after all. I think the countries are right - think Hungary's a bit behind the other two and Poland seems the strongest, but these are places that are holding Euro Tour or World Series events so it's logical enough.
PDC Europe Super League Champion, West Europe Qualifier > Netherlands/Belgium Qualifier, Mediterranean Qualifier, DACH Super League Champion (+1) - adding a spot here is fine. It would have been snappier to call the first of these events a Benelux qualifier (and it also means we don't forget Luxembourg, who seem to fit in neither of these events which I assume is just an oversight), but that could be fixed.
CDLC Qualifier, ADG Qualifier, TCH Qualifier 1-2 > UK/Ireland Associate Qualifier, CDLC Qualifier, ADG Qualifier, TCH Qualifier 1-4 (+3) - this is a mishmash of everything that's left. Although there's been plenty of calls to give a second African spot, I don't think it's quite the time given how few spots there are for some areas which are clearly stronger. Maybe that's something that comes sooner rather than later, similar in South America with Argentina looking pretty decent at the World Cup, but keeping it as is for the time being I think is the sensible thing. An associate qualifier for the UK and Ireland is a bit of an interesting one - I guess we have qualifiers for non-card holders for everywhere else, so why not? It'd essentially be a bonkers Challenge Tour event with all the money in one spot, which should be fun. Then we get an increase to four spots for any tour card holders that still aren't in. Which seems like a lot, given we could have as few as 40-45 players left - the brackets are only going to contain 10-12 players which is not a big field to run through, although at the very least it would take one heck of a number of withdrawals or other qualifying spots not running for someone to get a bye straight to the semis. If you're a card holder and don't make the worlds, you've been given your chances.
That leaves one qualifying spot to be determined - I don't know if this is a situation where they're waiting on something like knowing the Oceanic Masters will run, a potential new event that they're waiting for final clearance to unveil, or (hopefully not) some form of backup plan to gerrymander the field should a big name they want in the field not qualify. Maybe a catch all qualifier at some point around the WDF World Masters? Really not sure how they're going to use it, but we'll see.
