Trinidad and To­ba­go darts rep­re­sen­ta­tives Joshua Bal­four and James Walk­lin de­part­ed for Frank­furt, Ger­many, where they are set to make his­to­ry as the first pair to rep­re­sent the twin-is­land re­pub­lic at the 2026 BetVic­tor World Cup of Darts.

The duo left Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in the ear­ly hours of Mon­day morn­ing and are now fo­cused on the task ahead as they pre­pare to com­pete against some of the world's best darts na­tions.

T&T have been drawn in Group J along­side Latvia and Italy. The group will be­gin on Thurs­day (June 11), when Italy takes on Latvia in the open­ing match.

Walk­lin and Bal­four will make their World Cup de­but on Fri­day (June 12) at 6 am (T&T time) against the los­er of the Italy-Latvia en­counter. They will re­turn to the oche lat­er that day at 1 pm to face the win­ner of Thurs­day's match.

The road to Ger­many was not with­out its chal­lenges, ac­cord­ing to the T&T Darts As­so­ci­a­tion (TT­DA) in a re­lease.

It stat­ed, "Hav­ing se­cured qual­i­fi­ca­tion just one month be­fore the tour­na­ment, the team faced a race against time to se­cure the nec­es­sary fund­ing for the trip. How­ev­er, through the sup­port of the lo­cal darts com­mu­ni­ty and sev­er­al cor­po­rate part­ners, T&T's his­toric par­tic­i­pa­tion be­came a re­al­i­ty.

TT­DA went on to ex­tend its grat­i­tude to the lo­cal darts fra­ter­ni­ty and mem­bers of the as­so­ci­a­tion's ex­ec­u­tive for their tire­less fundrais­ing ef­forts.

"Spe­cial thanks are al­so ex­tend­ed to cor­po­rate sup­port­ers Uni­ver­sal Pack­age Sys­tems Lim­it­ed (UPS), Pub House, Mor­ry's on Mu­cu­rapo, and Haygem Tours and Trav­el Ser­vices Ltd, the re­lease added. The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so ac­knowl­edged the con­tri­bu­tion made by North­ern Rug­by Club.

De­spite the chal­lenges faced in the lead-up to the tour­na­ment, both Walk­lin and Bal­four were in pos­i­tive spir­its ahead of their de­par­ture and re­main con­fi­dent in their abil­i­ty to com­pete at a high lev­el on the world stage.

The pair will now look to cre­ate fur­ther his­to­ry when they step on­to the oche in Frank­furt, car­ry­ing the hopes of T&T's darts com­mu­ni­ty with them.