Luke Humphries and Jonny Clayton in big name blow for European Darts Trophy, both withdraw after Premier League Darts in Nottingham

Luke Humphries and Jonny Clayton will not in fact play at the European Darts Trophy in Gottingen between March 13-15 after being two of the leading lights in the draw with two different reasons given for the decision.

Humphries one is a bit of a crossed wires as it seems he was never really in the position to play this weekend. Supposedly his management indicated that he would not be competing but this was not relayed to the PDC.

So the draw was done with the PDC thinking he was in it when in reality he probably never was. They were notified after that he had withdrawn and under PDC rules given the draw had already been announced, Karel Sedlacek directly replaces him.

He now enters on Saturday evening against either William O'Connor or Mensur Suljovic in Round Two. While Jonny Clayton is perhaps not a shock. He was suffering with bad gout after Thursday night's Premier League which he still won despite this problem.

Albeit he did moot that he is unlikely to play and has promptly withdrawn speaking last night. “I'll get up tomorrow morning and see how I feel. I think I'm going to take this shoe off tonight and it's just going to say, wow, I'm here kind of thing, you know.”

“I doubt I'll be in Gottingen tomorrow, to be honest, because the way it's feeling now, it’s no chance."

But due to this flare up he will not make the trip to Gottingen and has been replaced from the reserve list by Cameron Crabtree who faces Kevin Doets or Jonas Masalin.

This in turn leaves Michael van Gerwen, Josh Rock, Stephen Bunting and Gerwyn Price as the leading lights this weekend with Nathan Aspinall previously exiting the event prior to proceedings also yesterday.