Gerwyn Price and Nathan Aspinall withdraw late from Players Championship 9 and 10 in Wigan

The player entries were updated on Sunday night ahead of the latest double header of darting action with Players Championship 9-10 due to take place in Wigan starting on Monday but two more big names have been culled from the line-up.

Gerwyn Price and Nathan Aspinall have decided against playing once again on the ProTour with Price continuing to be somewhat of a surprise absence given that The Iceman has in years gone by played most if not all ProTour tournaments.

Aspinall is also somewhat of a surprise given that he has been playing exhibitions all weekend and so isn't on holiday. He was in Purfleet and Epsom with Michael van Gerwen and Stephen Bunting. Albeit only 'The Bullet' out of that trio have decided to play leaning towards them all returning this weekend at the European Darts Grand Prix instead in Sindelfingen.

Price sits third in the Order of Merit behind Nijman and Dobey who both will play today. Aspinall is down in 19th.

Luke Humphries and Jonny Clayton lead the way in terms of Entries going into the action over the two days as well as the aforementioned Nijman and Dobey. Both tournaments see a field of 128 players comprised of both Tour Card holders and PDPA Associate Members.

Van Gerwen, Gary Anderson, Luke Littler, Gian van Veen and even Ryan Searle who like Price has been a bit of a mainstay on the tour have skipped this week with some in the case of Littler not playing at all this week as he has also skipped Sindelfingen and continues to mostly only play non German European Tours and Premier League.

Littler made it clear that he would likely only play the ProTours near his house this year so in Wigan but even when they have been in Wigan, he has not played and so it will be interesting to see whether it is solely down to the Premier League or whether he plays post May when that concludes.

Joe Hunt, Tommy Lishman, Aden Kirk, Martijn Dragt, Jack Tweddell, Tommy Morris, Daniel Klose, Florian Preis, Steve Lennon, Ted Evetts, Scott Waites, Jack Aldridge will deputise as a result with Oskar Lukasiak, Pero Ljubic, Pascal Rupprecht, Stefaan Henderyck and Kai Gotthardt also out.