The Gibraltar Darts Trophy continues on Saturday when the last 32 of the competition takes place as the final European Tour event of the season plays down to finals day with two sessions of action out in the Victoria Stadium.
This is the day where the seeded players join the competition. They face a qualifier who came through the play on Friday which means that for the first time this weekend we see Michael van Gerwen, Gerwyn Price and Peter Wright on show.
Afternoon Session
Rob Cross is the first of the seeded players on show on Saturday afternoon. The former world champion will look to make it through to Sunday at the expense of Rusty-Jake Rodriguez before Ryan Searle then takes on William O’Connor. The Irishman kept his hopes of reaching the European Championship alive when he beat Jim Williams on Friday but needs to win here to keep those hopes active still. When they are done Dave Chisnall begins his quest for successive European Tour crowns when he meets Wesley Plaisier before we reach the halfway mark in the afternoon with Dirk van Duijvenbode taking on Jason Lowe.
The second part of the afternoon begins with the UK Open champion Danny Noppert taking to the stage. He meets Ryan Joyce who is looking for a big finish to the year to make up for a poor first two-thirds of it. Jose de Sousa then continues the afternoon when he meets Rowby-John Rodriguez before the tie of afternoon takes place in the penultimate game of the session. That sees Damon Heta facing Chris Dobey who has to win to keep his European Championship hopes alive. The final match of the afternoon sees the World Grand Prix finalist Nathan Aspinall meeting Vincent van der Voort who is looking to keep the chasing pack at bay in the race for the European Championship spots.
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Evening Session
The evening session begins with a blockbuster of a clash between Michael Smith and the new World Youth Championship finalist Josh Rock. When they are done the leading money earner on the European Tour this season, Luke Humphries, goes onto the stage to take on Kenny Neyens before the world champion Peter Wright faces the one home player left in the event in Craig Galliano. We go into the evening interval with another top level clash as Jonny Clayton takes on Stephen Bunting.
The second half of the evening sees the World Grand Prix champion of last week, Michael van Gerwen, going up against Steve Beaton who had a bye through to this round on Friday. Two European Tour stalwarts meet in the third to last match of the day when Gerwyn Price begins the defence of his title against Mensur Suljovic. Dimitri Van den Bergh is up in the penultimate game of the evening when he takes on Gabriel Clemens before the day is rounded off with Joe Cullen facing Ritchie Edhouse.
Betting
I’ll take one bet on Saturday as we assess the seeded players and their form and it comes fairly early on in the afternoon session where I think William O’Connor is a big price to get the better of Ryan Searle. These two are going in opposite directions in their form. Prior to his win over Jim Williams on Friday, where he averaged 97.14, O’Connor had made the final of a European Tour event and needs to keep winning to have a chance of qualifying for the European Championship.
In the run to that final he took care of Dimitri Van den Bergh, Michael Smith, Jose de Sousa and Nathan Aspinall before going down to Joe Cullen. He has won six of his last seven matches. That is markedly different to the form of Searle, which has fallen off a cliff in recent times. He has lost seven of his last eight matches and in the one he won his opponent didn’t even average 80 and he isn’t going to run into those sorts of performances very often. O’Connor is showing no sign of playing that badly and having had a match on the stage I think he’s a big price at 7/5 to continue the poor form of Searle.
Tips
Back W.O’Connor to beat R.Searle for a 3/10 stake at 2.40 with Betfred
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