Day 3 afternoon report - a Canadian calamity

Good god. Mickey Mansell. What the hell was that? For those of you that didn't watch it, don't bother, Mansell was playing at maybe Superleague level, if that, and Long only averaged less than a point better, it's a minor miracle that it didn't go to a fifth set. That might have been the worst match in Ally Pally history - if we look at Speedboat%, a new metric I've made up right now where we measure how often someone scores 101 or more in their first six darts, Mansell was at 89%, although on three occasions he only made it exactly, and Long was at 78%. It was a horrific game to watch, and Long now gets to play van de Pas, a game which if anything might be worse.

Before that Richard North edged out Robert Marijanovic, North hitting a stupid number of maximums but kept being pegged back by Robert scoring consistently and hitting key outs at critical times, including three 100+ outs with North waiting on double or an easy two darter, but he choked at the end - needing 70 for the match he missed a big number three times and only left 47 if he returned (which he didn't), god knows what Harrington would have said (suppose it's karma he got the Mansell match). North will have to up his game against West next round you'd think, well everything except his 180 hitting.

Josh Payne advanced past Jeff Smith, who had a good first set but wasn't really at the races after that. Payne found his scoring in set two and didn't leave Smith much of a chance, comfortably held out set 3, the game dropped in quality after that but Payne got home.

Then we were left with Hopp against Noppert, a match which didn't really didn't reflect on how well Noppert played given the 3-0 scoreline (first set excepted) - he just couldn't hit a double, 3/22 is atrocious no matter how you dress it up, oddly one was a bull to finish a 130 out. Danny had darts to win five of the six legs Hopp had won in the second two sets, it was only the 140-180-134-47 out leg where Hopp denied him a shot. Hopp played fine, not "will threaten MvG" level of fine but enough that the game will be competitive, assuming Tabern doesn't shock the world.