Danny Noppert and Dirk van Duijvenbode made it into the last eight at the European Championship Darts in Dortmund. The last two Dutch trump cards in the title tournament meet in the quarter-finals, scheduled for Sunday.

Noppert also met a compatriot in the first game of the day. The number eleven in the world rankings and Vincent van der Voort, who is 27th, fought an exciting duel that only came to a decision on the nineteenth stage: 10-9.

Van der Voort could have taken the initiative – after four breaks back and forth – in the fifteenth leg but failed to throw out 32 and break past his opponent.

Bad start

Van Duijvenbode got off to a bad start in his match against Englishman James Wade, who, as number five in the world rankings, is eleven notches above Katwijker. He immediately relinquished his own leg.

But he already hit back in the fourth and sixth leg and after two more breaks he was able to decide the game with the arrows in the seventeenth leg. Wade created another escape route, but the 2018 tournament winner couldn’t knock out 42, after which Van Duijvenbode had no trouble with 28.

Michael van Gerwen fell in the first lap on Friday. Despite two match darts, the four-time European champion lost 6:5 to the Englishman Chris Dobey, from whom he had previously won eleven matches.