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Premier League Play-offs

WEMBLEY READY FOR LEAGUE FINALE

Thousands of darts fans will be making their way to the Wembley Arena on Thursday May 19th 2011 for the climax of the 888.com Premier League. Defending champion Phil Taylor, World Champion Adrian Lewis, Gary Anderson and Raymond van Barneveld will contest the play-off semi-finals as they bid to lift the coveted league title and take away the £125,000 prize money.

Phil Taylor topped the league after the 14 weeks of action, suffering only one defeat, this coming on the opening night when World Champion Adrian Lewis inflicted an 8-2 scoreline over ‘The Power’. The two meet again at Wembley in the first semi-final with Taylor going into the match after suffering defeats on both days of last weekends Austrian Open Players Championships, losing in the last 16 to John Part on the Saturday and in Sunday’s final to Vincent van der Voort.

Lewis, Anderson and Barneveld all missed the Austrian events Despite those defeats Taylor goes into the showdown with Lewis in confident mood declaring “I’m after Adie big style, i’d like to go at him (Lewis) as hard as i can, that’s what i’m going to do. He’s the World Champion and i’m not, it’s man against man on Thursday”. Lewis will be hoping to re-capture the form that saw him lift his first World title back in January and if he can step onto the oche on Thursday with that mind-set then we could have a semi-final that will go the distance. Taylor will start as favourite but Adrian knows he can beat him on the big stage and we may well need all 15 legs to decide this one.

Holland’s Raymond van Barneveld and Scotland’s World Championship runner-up Gary Anderson will clash in the second semi-final having finished second and third in the league respectively. Gary Anderson is the form player in World darts right now but that won’t bother Barneveld who has won both matches between the two during the league season, winning 8-5 at Brighton week 7 and 8-4 at Bournemouth week 13. Raymond will believe he can win for the third time but if Anderson starts finding his range on the treble and hitting the 180’s, he set a Premier league record of eleven in his match with Simon Whitlock at Birmingham, then this has the making of a final leg thriller.

All four players will be up for the challenge, can Anderson finally win a major PDC title ? Will Taylor defend his crown ? Lewis will be wanting to show us why he’s World Champion and Barneveld will want to be the first wildcard pick to go on and win the league title.

We’ll find out the answers come Thursday as Wembley waits for the world’s best dart players

SEMI-FINALS (Best of 15 legs)

Phil Taylor v Adrian Lewis

Gary Anderson v Raymond van Barneveld

THIRD-PLACE PLAY-OFF (Best of 15 legs)

FINAL (Best of 19 legs)

Catch all the action live on Sky Sports HD & LIVE PDC.TV

Andrew Devonshire PDPA