Both the World Cup of Darts and football’s version kicked off yesterday. Between the two, there was the odd shock and a few red cards on what, if you happen to be Belgian or South African, a fairly crap evening all round.

I’ll run through the highlights in terms of results, then we can crack on and have a bit of a giggle with some of my observations, okay?

Wales – bumped out of the seeds due to Gezzy’s withdrawal – began well, smashing Lithuania like Greek plate-wielding guests at a wedding. On debut, Nick Kenny played well, but it was Jonny Clayton’s checkouts which stole the show. The Ferret took out back-to-back maximum finishes to seal the job. Beat Thailand tonight and the job is done as far as the group stage goes.

Belgium’s Mike De Decker must have woken up with a sore back this morning after carrying his partner Dimitri Van den Bergh – sadly for them, to no avail, as they went down to Hong Kong. The Dreammaker had a bad day at the office, but they should have too much this afternoon for debutants Slovenia to put the pressure back on the Asians later. However, I can’t see it mattering. For me, this was essentially a play-off to see who went through. And you get no silver medal in this format for coming second.

Poor Jose De Sousa always seems to get lumbered with a random Portuguese lad who he’s probably never heard of. That said, I’d have fancied Poland to beat them with two Special Ones on that stage – and that proved to be the case. There was even a flicker of a smile from Krzysztof Ratajski, which I am putting down to wind rather than joyous euphoria. The Polish Eagle doesn’t do happy. Win or lose, you’d do well to spot the difference.

Hosts Germany performed extremely well, probably the best of the rest on the night, as they bagelled the Philippines, with the irony of using a Jewish food reference to describe their victory not lost on me.

Aside from that, there were no huge shocks. If the Aussie team was Heta and Whitlock, you’d have fancied them against the experienced American duo of Buntz and Nevada. But as decent as Adam Leek is – he is named after a vegetable and doesn’t have a beard to be feared – at least not by the Yanks.

Quick mention to the Republic of Ireland, who were impressive in cruising past Singapore. The new-look Willie and Mickey duo look like they’re going to sail through to the knock-out stages and perhaps be the darkest of all the other horses.

Right, if you want to take a look at the scores, they’re listed at the bottom. Time for some fun.

Japan’s Motomu Sakai is quite the character. If he rolled up to a pub in the manner he does to a PDC stage, you’d probably think he’s hammered and stop him from entering. Totally bonkers and, if he bagged what most people behaving like that are usually on and sold it, he’d be a very rich man.

Sakai decided to don a pair of dark shades for the walk-on and pretend he was blind. Next time, I reckon he’ll get his team-mate Haruki Muramatsu to push him down the aisle in a wheelchair. Then, if Japan do qualify, which it looks like they will, my bet is on ear muffs, going fully Gezzy Price at the Worlds and mocking the deaf. An unusual approach to say the least. We live in a world where somebody will be offended by his entry. Based on last night’s attempt at humour, I’m going to say he upset a fair few of the woke-left brigade – but, importantly, not the actual blind people, who couldn’t see what he was doing anyway.

However, for all that, those Hong Kong lads can sure play darts and, despite being dwarfed by a couple of burly Croatian blokes dressed as colourful chessboards, got the win. I bet whoever designed those shirts is still ringing his mate in Zagreb some two decades later saying, “I can’t believe they’re still wearing them, Luka!” as if he’d just painted the Sistine Chapel rather than come up with a dart shirt that looks something like what Magnus Carlson would wear on his Stag Party.

Got to pay homage to Paul Lim, who once again is Singapore’s leading marksman. Maybe not the great player he once was, but given that he predates Stonehenge, still a threat. Mansell, as we know, has defected from Northern Ireland to the Republic. Much safer than trying that on with the Koreas – being shot would be the least of your worries there. And teamed with one of only two World Cup ever-presents in Willie O’Connor, they safely got the job done.

Interesting dilemma on the night for The Sportsman Management Company owner Mac Elkin. The lovable Brummie loves a good Indian or a Chinese. But for two of his quintet – Adam Gawlas and Mensur Suljović – when their respective nations, Czechia and Austria, were facing blokes from those fine cuisine nations, he wasn’t in favour of two of his favourite delicacies.

With Austria’s Rusty-Jake Rodriguez having Asian family roots, and both his team and the Chinese duo dressed in almost identical kits, at first glance it didn’t seem fair that big Mensur should be in a three-on-one situation. Which leads me to my next observation.

Let’s adopt home and away kits. You wouldn’t watch an FA Cup Final with both teams in bright red. Fine, you know who’s who, but it just makes things easier if the two teams’ kits don’t clash. That said, Stowe Buntz was dressed like Santa Claus on acid last night. Absolutely no one is confuse him with another player.

Last night, when Belgium played Hong Kong, both bizarrely had designed a kind of maroon kit. Nothing at all like either nation’s flags. In fact, it looked like someone had grabbed a massive vat, stuck a bit of each colour that appears on their ensigns and mixed it together before proudly saying, “That’ll do – they can both wear this colour.”

I’m fine to give the anthems a miss – we’d be there all night, and it went on long enough as it was without two sets of merry arrow-smiths standing on stage desperately trying to recite the lyrics to their nation’s tunes. It’d be like listening to cats getting strangled. And God only knows what Japan’s Sakai would be up to during theirs.

Anyway, all good fun. And unlike over in the States, no one in Frankfurt actually got sent off.

OPENING GROUP GAME – RESULTS

Czechia 4-0 India (H)
Japan 4-3 Croatia (K)
Norway 4-3 Finland (L)
Republic of Ireland 4-1 Singapore (D)
Poland 4-1 Portugal (E)
Sweden 4-2 South Africa (F)
Latvia 4-2 Italy (J)
Hong Kong 4-2 Belgium (B)
Germany 4-0 Philippines (A)
Wales 4-1 Lithuania (C)
Austria 4-1 China (I)
USA 4-3 Australia (G)