Germany delight home crowd with superb Canada win, Northern Ireland avert Hong Kong scare

Germany have delighted the home crowd in Jena at the World Cup of Darts by surging into the second round after a 5-3 victory over Canada as the first round continues to come towards its conclusion.

The latter took an early break but Germany surged back and took the crowd with them as Max Hopp returned for double 10 to make it 1-1.

But these breaks continued with a superb sequence of ton plus checkouts as Smith hit first for Canada with a 107 to make it 2-1 before Clemens hit back with 118 to break straight back at 2-2.

Hopp followed that up though with the first hold of the match pinning double 16 to make it 3-2. This proved a catalyst for the home heroes as they went 4-3 ahead and after Matt Campbell missed three darts to hold, it was Hopp again who turned into the hero winning 5-3.

Before that, it was relief for Northern Ireland's duo of Brendan Dolan and Daryl Gurney as they scraped past Hong Kong in a 5-4 victory surviving multiple match darts in the process.

The team lead by Kai Fan Leung were keeping pace early on and causing Northern Ireland problems by making it 2-2 and these problems were made worse for Gurney and Dolan as Hong Kong went one away with a break at 4-3.

But in the end, it was relief for the fifth seeds as they survived five match darts to scrape through as experience told defeating the Hong Kong pairing 5-4.