Huge Turnout For U21 Qualifiers

THE Rileys Qualifiers for the PDC Unicorn Under-21 World Championship have attracted over 1,000 entries as young stars around the UK bid to make their breakthrough.

The inaugural Under-21 World Championship will see the champion crowned on stage at Alexandra Palace during the Ladbrokes.com World Darts Championship in the New Year, taking home a £10,000 prize and a PDC ProTour Card.

The Last 64 will play off down to the finalists on Saturday November 6 at the Barnsley Metrodome, as the eight PDPA members and International Qualifiers are joined by a series of Rileys Qualifiers.

Over 1,000 players will compete in knockout qualifiers to be held in Rileys DartsZones, with 46 different venues staging a qualifier on October 16 and 23.

The Rileys Qualifiers will be held at the following venues:
Saturday October 16
Aberdeen, Bolton, Burton-on-Trent, Chester, Chesterfield, Coventry, Edinburgh, Hull, Inverness, Ipswich, Leicester, Lincoln, Liverpool (Birkenhead), Liverpool (Bootle), Loughborough, Manchester (Chorlton), Middlesbrough, Norwich, Peterborough, Scunthorpe, Solihull, Stafford, Stirling, Sunderland, Wigan.

Saturday October 23
Basildon, Bournemouth, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff, Colchester, Croydon, Exeter, Gillingham, Gloucester, London (Victoria), Oxford, Plymouth, Reading, Southend, South Benfleet (Essex), Stevenage, Taunton, Torquay, Wolverhampton, Worcester.

Rileys Qualifiers will be played over the best of seven legs down to the final, which will be the best of nine legs.

Meanwhile, the latest International Qualifier to book his place in Barnsley is Edwin Torbjörnsson, a 17-year-old from Stockholm who won the Swedish Qualifier.

He joins Australian Mitchell Clegg, Irish pair Martin Heneghan and David Coyne, Dutch duo Rico Dera and Dirk van Duijvenbode and Finland's Teemo Harju in winning through to the Last 64.

The eight seeds are the leading PDPA members aged between 16 and 21 who compete on the PD circuit, and are Michael van Gerwen, Joe Cullen, Arron Monk (pictured above), Michael Smith, Tom Martin, Ryan Herrington, Tony Clark and Sean White.