Irish in World Darts, second day in Seoul

The Irish team had mixed results on their second day at the WDF Darts World Cup 2025 in Seoul, writes Derek Courtney from South Korea. It didn't go as well as we would have hoped, after the elation of the first day's successes.

In the youth mixed pairs, Jack Courtney played with Zoe Burke and Aidan O'Hara played with Rachel Ivers, and they had a tough group where the standard was unbelievable. In the group games, both Jack and Zoe and Aidan and Rachel lost their first round matches to Canada and Austria respectively. Jack and Zoe fought back brilliantly to win their second match, 3-1 against Germany, to set up an eliminator in the round robin, where they unfortunately lost to a really strong Mongolian pair. Aidan and Rachel lost their second match to Germany, which put them in an impossible situation, although they showed a lot of grit and determination to beat a very strong finish pair in the last round of matches. 

Jack and Aidan can both look forward to the singles tomorrow, and obviously that final on Friday night. Zoe and Rachel are looking forward to their pairs tomorrow.

In the ladies team event today, we had Denise Cassidy, Aoife McCormick, Katie Sheldon, and Robyn Byrne; they played fantastically — the whole quartet beat Lithuania 9-1, Turkey 9-2, and New Zealand 9-1. The highlight of the day for Denise has to be her 152 checkout against Turkey. They're a great bunch of girls, so I'd say they'll go a long way in the competition, and they'll go into the knockouts of that competition on Friday. 

The Blue Ribbon event of all these competitions is the men's singles, and the standard in this is unbelievable. You have former world champion Scott Mitchell, and I've no doubt that there are probably future world champions on the field. In our first game, Gerard McGlynn, who we had high hopes for, ran into the PDC player Jeff Smith and eventually succumbed to Jeff, who played tremendous stuff and never really gave Ger a chance, although he fought hard. Stephen Rosney, to me, was probably the unlucky loser of the day. He got a bye in his first round match, which meant he had a five-hour wait before he played his first game. Obviously, when you play someone who's already been playing a game, it made it difficult for Stephen. He played well, but it just wasn't good enough and he eventually lost 4-1. 

Paddy Quinn played really well today. He won his first game 4-0, and then he won a second game 4-2, but then he played the Czech guy Adam Gawlass. He's a top-ranked player, and he beat Paddy 4-2, although Paddy did do a 160 checkout in that game. He never gave up, and he ran Gawless right to the wire. 

Dean Finn came up against an absolutely quality Swede who never gave Dean a look in and had him under pressure from the start. Although Dean fought gallantly, he just couldn't get back and was taken out. 

Tomorrow we have the women's singles, the youth singles, the girls’ pairs, and the open pairs for the girls and for the men, so it should be a good day. 

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