One is the fact that both of the tour card holders from Czechia were missing this weekend. That really, really sucks from a perspective of a home fan. The tricky thing is how you fix that in a fair way given the countries that are going to be hosting a Euro Tour. If you just go back to how it was with the top two in one of the orders of merit getting in automatically, that would be fine for Sedlacek and Gawlas, and likely fine for half the events, but for the German events, it just gives Clemens plus one other (Pietreczko, despite losing his 30 grand from his bink last year just now, looks like he'd just about hold in the automatic Pro Tour invites, so probably Hempel) getting an absolute shit load of opportunities for nothing. Maybe if you say that two of the ten from the tour card holder qualifier must be from the home nation? If you switch it down to eight going through automatically as opposed to ten this could work. If you get two out of the eight from the host nation, then just take the eight final round losers and have them play down to two to fill things out to ten. If you don't get two, then look through who got through to the furthest round in the qualifier and add them in - playing off as necessary. Clearly for countries where there are very limited numbers of card holders from the country in question, this would not necessarily be needed. It also has the effect of further limiting spots for domestic (UK) card holders - so maybe pull those two spots from the Pro Tour list and only invite 14 instead of 16? It's a tough one to work fairly for sure.
Then we have the situation we had with the replacements coming in. This was ridiculous. Before the draw came out, Ando and Joyce (again?) withdrew, and in came Razma and Hempel. This is fine. Then, after the draw, Cross dropped out, and was replaced directly with Huybrechts. This is not fine at all. What should have happened is that whoever was the highest ranked player on the Pro Tour should have slotted into Cross's seeding position, and then Huybrechts fills the empty first round spot. I can't work out who that would have been - I'm guessing it was one of Clayton or Gurney, but who it was is irrelevant. The thing is that Huybrechts became a de facto seed, and had to beat one standard qualifier to win £4k in ranking money. Razma and Hempel needed to win two. Which of these paths is the easiest - Ratajski then van Gerwen, Soutar then Ross Smith, or sit on your arse then Luke Woodhouse or Marko Kantele? If you said anything other the last one, go home, you're drunk. This of course became even sillier as Huybrechts went on to reach the final, where he thankfully lost, otherwise he would have made the European Championship where not only did he not qualify for a single event, but he didn't play a top 32 player at all until the final. No disrespect to Woodhouse, Drtil, Wattimena and Zonneveld, but if you can show me an easier path to a European Tour final, I'd be delighted to see it. Then we had Price dropping out after the event started, and then being replaced by Kuivenhoven. Nope. That shouldn't happen. After the event has started, you don't replace anyone. That's bullshit. RvB should have got a bye for that one. You could argue Price didn't play a game yet and can be replaced, but I'm not having that. What would have happened if Humphries had beaten Littler then felt a nerve twinge in between the semi and final? If Huybrechts would have got a free win then, then van Barneveld should have got a free win on Saturday. The tournament has started. Nobody would take the event seriously if, say, Paul Krohne had decided to go watch the event yesterday and said "I'll sub in, cue my music!" in such a circumstance.
Still, the Euro Tour is done, and we've got 25 of the top 26 (van den Bergh excepted) in the event, and nobody outside of the top 40 in FRH in it, so the PDC have got the stacked field they always wanted, even if it just looks like a redo of the Grand Prix or Matchplay, give or take a Wattimena or Dirk. I'll look at those games in the coming days, but for now, an FRH update:
1 Luke Humphries
2 Michael van Gerwen
3 Rob Cross (UP 1)
4 Dave Chisnall (DOWN 1)
5 Luke Littler (UP 1)
6 Michael Smith (DOWN 1)
7 Stephen Bunting (UP 1)
8 Damon Heta (DOWN 1)
9 Jonny Clayton (UP 1)
10 Chris Dobey (UP 1)
11 James Wade (UP 2)
12 Gerwyn Price
13 Dimitri van den Bergh (UP 3)
14 Peter Wright (DOWN 5)
15 Ryan Searle
16 Ross Smith (DOWN 2)
17 Josh Rock
18 Mike de Decker (NEW)
19 Martin Schindler (DOWN 1)
20 Danny Noppert (DOWN 1)
Aspinall is the player to drop out, but is within a Pro Tour final of getting back on, not that there are many there to work with. This does include first round European Championship final money - Dimitri would be a couple of places higher up otherwise. As stated, the entire Euros field is inside the top 40 - Wattimena climbs up there, while looking back a bit further, Wesley Plaisier is now into the top 60. Check back later in the week for Dortmund thoughts.
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