Long time readers will know that I'm not a huge fan of the World Cup. Pairs SUCKS, and the format is such that you've got countries travelling half way around the world to, quite possibly, have a player throw ~30 darts and then be done in the tournament. If the tournament is extended a day to allow singles/singles/pairs from round one, then maybe, but you could potentially fly in New Zealand to get twatted 5-0 in 20 minutes, which is really dumb. But what did we actually learn?
- Chinese visa/travel situation continues to suck. It's probably the one country we know the least about, they get all the visas sorted, but get fucked over at the last minute. So unfortunate. Credit to Latvia for coming in at the last minute and getting the win though.
- Some decent young players. Gibraltan team was incredibly young and did OK. Gawlas played his part in nearly getting Czechia into the main event, real pity they botched leg 7.
- On the other hand, Belgium, their opponents, should be a force - I doubt there's more than three teams that are better than them.
- Italy developing alright, was nearly able to take Spain down which would have been a bit of a coup.
- How were Northern Ireland the #4 seeds?
- Asian teams underperformed a bit I think. Philippines did alright but their approach was disrupted. Japan I fancied to take out Scotland but couldn't get it done, averaging 75 while only having five darts at double, only two missed - maybe not a surprise given how bad Asada was in the Japanese qualifier now that I think about it. China couldn't make the event at all. Hong Kong lost to a last minute replacement. Real pity, it's such a strong region but we're not going to see much at all.
- Whatever USA selection criteria they used that ended up with them not picking their clear strongest player is clearly retarded.
- Canada looked pretty good. Smith we know is good and Campbell is at worst a competent partner, putting a 94 up in pairs is not to be sniffed at and, against New Zealand, a quarters spot isn't unrealistic.
- Greece were surprisingly efficient. 5/8 on doubles, and not allowing Sweden more than one dart at double all match.
- Poland are a decent outfit, but surely Petersen could do enough to at least allow South Africa a dart at a double?
- Boris Koltsov is a legend.
- Germany didn't need to do much against Finland, but they did it very well. Ought to be a contender.
May comment more in the next couple of days, but I'm mostly looking forward to the Winter Series, most of who I really wanted to see are out already, so a bunch of the appeal has gone really.
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