"Itโs not just Phil and Adrian, itโs now Luke and Michael": Humphries and Smith overjoyed after breaking World Cup of Darts duck
PDCMonday, 01 July 2024 at 08:00
England has won the World Cup of Darts. Luke Humphries and Michael Smith were too strong for Austria in the final, 10-6.
For England, it is the fifth overall victory at the World Cup of Darts, but the first since 2016. In addition, it is the first time a duo other than Phil Taylor and Adrian Lewis has won the overall victory for England.
โThis is the biggest buzz Iโve felt since the World Championship,โ said Humphries. โWe really wanted this. We really believed we could win it, and when youโve got the world number one and world number three playing together, itโs a bit of a cheat code!
โAfter that first game on Saturday we just clicked. We knew if we played our best we could win this title, and I just hope we get to come back to defend this title as champions next year.โ
For Michael Smith, in his fifth appearance at the World Cup of Darts, it finally hit the mark
Gold medal
For now, Smith was not having the best year of his career, but was beaming after winning the World Cup of Darts. โThis is what Iโve always wanted. Iโve finally got my gold medal now,โ said Smith.
โIt is hard to put into words how much this means. England are World Cup champions again and itโs not just Phil and Adrian, itโs now Luke and Michael as well.
โHopefully now that gives me the confidence to kick on. I know my game is starting to come, and now Iโm going into the World Matchplay as a World Cup champion!โ
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- Honestly,who cares? This league should be scrapped. It's just a money spinner for PDC and sky. How on earth can 8 players do this every week,and leave the rest behind? It's a bit shameful really. Anyone can win against anyone,but not every week. Scrap itrick6712-03-2026
- depends on the tournament, easier to tune out at minehead where the acoustics aren't very good and half the crowd are pensioners. "keir starmer's a w*****" is their only good chant though, they should censor the rest and keep that one.colt09-03-2026
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DartsEnvy09-03-2026 - I can't answer why, only the PDC can. I do watch most of them on PDC TV - I have it on in the background when working from home haha. There can be some great moments in them like Beau's recent 9 darter etc. As for their significance, they all contribute to the players rankings with the winners of each day getting 15K, so they are important to their rankings as well as their overall earnings. Win 4 in a year and there's a nice 60K (runner up also gets 10K per day). Also I've seen so many interviews where players say they really enjoy it, because its "pure darts" without the spectacle and they can just get on with it. As per the original reply above, with the stage format playing in front of a bunch of booing drunkards, it's a nice change of pace and can aid concentration. So I can perfectly understand why the players like it so much - it's a good earner, not quite as late nights and very quiet / pure.DartsEnvy09-03-2026
- Would love if podcast was available on youtube. Dont have spotify.kangacheckoutz03-03-2026
- ah ok, that helps put it in context, cheersMrMarkWatsonnonotthatone28-02-2026
- Any IDeaS.....richieburnettrocks28-02-2026
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- Wright's wife DEMANDS he continues so IT can rook every last penny from him. Commentary beckons.richieburnettrocks28-02-2026
- i can't answer this definitively, but i can make some suggestions. firstly, these are essentially just glorified qualifiers for TV events which double as helping the lesser players on tour make a living, but they aren't really considered that significant. they weren't even streamed until the past decade or so. most casual fans don't even know they exist and getting an audience in might be difficult. i'm assuming they're currently quite cheap to run and they would need to sell a lot of tickets to justify opening them up into more of a spectacle. they're held on weekdays when most people are at work anyway and there's no room on the calendar to put most of them on weekends. the logistics of presenting it to an audience would also be tricky given that they have to get through 7 rounds containing 128 players in a single day, using loads of stages simultaneously. maybe the uk open could be used as a template but it'd need to be even more condensed into a short time period, and even with the uk open it's hard to follow most of the games. the venues they're currently held at wouldn't cater for turning this into a public event as they're pretty small, so they'd need to hire much bigger venues 30 times in places around the country. it just probably isn't feasible. i also suspect the players don't really want to play in front of drunk audiences in every single domestic tournament, they already have the euro tour, world series and majors for that. the players championship is basically a way for players to demonstrate they're ready to make the step up to those levels of competition.colt26-02-2026
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