A darts legend is back on the big stage!
After resigning from his resignation, Raymond van Barneveld (54) is back in the “Ally Pally” with a 3-0 win over outsider Lourence Ilagan (43) from the Philippines.
At 10:28 p.m. the Dutch five-time world champion (four times with the BDO association, 2007 with the PDC) takes the stage. As usual to his walk-on song “Eye of the Tiger”, enthusiastically celebrated by his loyal followers – the “Barney Army”.
And: Barney is back!
From the third leg onwards, the old master finds his game better and better, and wins the first set 3-1. After that, things get one-sided, there is hardly any resistance from Ilagan. Strong: Van Barneveld made 121 win the second set, at this point he had a checkout rate of 60 percent.
At the beginning of the third movement, Barney nailed his first (of two) 180s into the board – huge cheers in the “Ally Pally”! After half an hour, van Barneveld is through – 3-0!
Then he admits to “DAZN”: “Quitting two years ago was probably the biggest mistake of my life. Then there was Covid and I couldn’t do anything. At some point I had seen all the films on Netflix … ”.
Van Barneveld had ended his incredibly successful career after the 2020 World Cup, explaining: “If you lose two years in a row in the first round, then you are an amateur. Then you don’t belong in this game anymore. I’ll tell myself that until the end of my life ”. Almost a year later he made his comeback – and returned to London’s Alexandra Palace on Monday evening.
His demands remain high. “I dream of winning the World Cup, hopefully this dream will come true,” said van Barneveld before his opening game. He has the quality to beat the best players in the world. Only when he reached the quarter-finals or even the semi-finals would he have played a good World Cup.
An ambitious goal that van Barneveld now has to put into action. In the second round on Thursday he will meet the Englishman Rob Cross (31), the 2018 World Cup champion.
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