“Best experience of my life... It was better than my wedding” - Trinidad and Tobago make World Cup of Darts history with first ever win despite cruel Latvia twist

Trinidad and Tobago won a World Cup of Darts match for the first time in their history in Frankfurt, but Joshua Balfour and James Walklin were left with a brutal mix of pride and frustration after beating Latvia 4-3 while still missing out on the last 16.

Latvia needed three legs to progress from Group J, and they got them before Trinidad and Tobago could finish the job. Walklin still pinned tops in the deciding leg, completing a 56 checkout and sealing a landmark victory over Madars Razma and Valters Melderis.

The result did not change the group outcome, but it changed what Trinidad and Tobago took away from their World Cup debut. They had led 1-0, then 2-1, before Latvia fought back. Balfour narrowly missed two doubles to move 3-2 ahead, and Melderis punished him on double two to put Latvia 3-2 up and secure the legs required for qualification.

Balfour then pinned double five to force a one-leg shootout. Walklin finished the job on tops, sealing a win that brought celebration on stage and disappointment once the wider picture settled. “It is bittersweet to win,” Balfour said afterwards. “I will still cry, but not as much.”

Walklin struggled to put the emotion of the night into words after Trinidad and Tobago’s breakthrough win. “Wow. I do not think there are enough words to sum up how we are feeling right now,” he said. “To beat the seeded team in the group, despite the fact that we did not come out of the group, shows that we have the level to compete. A little bit too late, but that is how it goes sometimes.”

Trinidad and Tobago had needed a 4-0, 4-1 or 4-2 win to progress. Once the match reached 3-3, the qualification equation had gone. “I think maybe at 3-3 the shackles were released because we had nothing to lose,” Balfour said. “Therefore we played free. It is our first time in this environment and it is addictive.”

Walklin said the nerves had been part of the experience rather than something to fear. “I went on that stage with butterflies in my stomach,” he said. “I told a girl yesterday that if you do not get butterflies in your stomach for any endeavour in life, then it is not worth doing.”

“Best experience of my life,” Walklin continued. “I have no children. Best experience of my life. It was better than my wedding. It was fantastic.”

Balfour’s disappointment centred on Trinidad and Tobago’s first group match, a 4-2 defeat to Italy that left them needing a heavier win over Latvia. “Fundamentally, we should have done better in the first game,” Balfour said. “Simple as that. It all falls back to us. There is no one else who throws the dart other than myself or James. We have to fix it.”

Walklin also pointed to the scale of the CDLC route, with Trinidad and Tobago having to come through a vast qualifying region for one World Cup place. “You have Argentina, Brazil, Bahamas, Barbados,” he said. “It is always strong and it is a very large qualifying region. It is the whole of the Caribbean, Latin America and South America for one spot. You lose one game and you are done.”

Walklin referenced Rashad Sweeting’s Ally Pally appearance as another marker for darts in the region, while placing Trinidad and Tobago’s own World Cup win in the same wider push. “Having been here, and I can speak for Joshua as well in this aspect, being able to compete and not being out of place is going to spur everyone in the region on to do better and to put in that extra work,” he said.

Balfour also argued for more opportunities from the region. “It shows that we have the talent and we need to be given the opportunity so that we can showcase our talent to the world,” he said.

Trinidad and Tobago’s domestic scene remains small compared to darts’ established nations. Walklin and Balfour said around 200 players are active across three domestic tiers, with four Trinidad and Tobago players finishing inside the top 20 in singles at the most recent CDLC Championship in Panama.

Walklin said the stage nerves faded once he and Balfour settled, with the crowd noise becoming “white noise” during their opening match. “It was just me, my partner and the dartboard,” he said. “It was eye-opening. We went into the second game with no anxiety. I was yearning for it. I wanted to play the game. Simple as that.”

Latvia advanced. Trinidad and Tobago did not. Balfour and Walklin still left Frankfurt with their country’s first World Cup win, a seeded nation beaten, and a stage experience they already want back.