Schedule Friday night session 2021 World Cup of Darts featuring England and Belgium

Friday night sees the first round at the World Cup of Darts finalise with England and Belgium among the countries in action in Jena.

Starting off the evening session will be Russia's pairing of Boris Koltsov and Evgenii Izotov facing off against Japan's new look team of Matsuda Jun and Yoshihisa Baba.

Spain will be without Toni Alcinas for the first time but it is a familiar pairing in Jesus Noguera and Jose Justicia who will face off against the continuation of Devon Petersen and Carl Gabriel for South Africa.

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Republic of Ireland's William O'Connor and Steve Lennon suffered a first round exit last year but will carry memories of their final appearance two years ago when it was last played in front of fans. They will take on a tough opener though in Portugal's pairing of Jose de Sousa and Jose Marques.

One of the matches of the opening round is potentially set following that with Austria's familiar duo of Mensur Suljovic and Rowby-John Rodriguez set to face off against Philippines' Lourence Ilagan who teams with Christian Perez after Paolo Nebrida had to withdraw due to vaccination issues.

It has been three quarter-finals for Rodriguez in particular during his time with the team including last year and with him and his brother Rusty-Jake in some supreme form this year not being on tour, they could even go further this year.

As could Northern Ireland who on paper always have a great pairing in Daryl Gurney and Brendan Dolan with the latter in particular impressing on the ProTour all year but haven't got further than the second round since 2016 and only past the first round once in that time. They will face Hong Kong led by Kai Fan Leung.

One of the big ties of the round sees Jeff Smith and Matt Campbell, Canada's formidable pairing who reached the Quarter-Finals last year face home heroes in Max Hopp and Gabriel Clemens for Germany.

This is followed by England's James Wade and Dave Chisnall facing Brazil who will be anchored as usual by Diogo Portela and will look to spring a shock on a side who are long overdue some success in this tournament again.

Before a team who have made their World Cup a staple of their calendar in Belgium with Kim Huybrechts and Dimitri van den Bergh always one of the best teams involved and off the back of a semi-final last year.

The fourth seeds will face Greece and will hope to go all the way this time around against a team who usually play the event but were late call-ups due to Croatia's late withdrawal.

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2021 World Cup of Darts Schedule

Friday September 10

Evening Session (1900 local time, 1800 BST)

8x First Round

Russia v Japan

Spain v South Africa

Republic of Ireland v Portugal

Austria v Philippines

Northern Ireland v Hong Kong

Germany v Canada

England v Brazil

Belgium v Greece