{"id":587285,"date":"2025-11-22T18:44:21","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T18:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/587285\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T18:44:21","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T18:44:21","slug":"northern-irelands-world-cup-heroes-progress-to-next-round-of-players-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/587285\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Ireland\u2019s World Cup heroes progress to next round of Players Championship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Josh Rock and Daryl Gurney\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/014990ce-8a11-4b01-a776-d83694755402.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_caption1 beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_secondary beltel-66f0fec7_regular beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_marginleft0 beltel-1d70522a_marginright0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop3 beltel-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Josh Rock and Daryl Gurney<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Northern Ireland\u2019s Daryl Gurney stunned World No.4 Stephen Bunting to take his place in the last-16 of the Players Championship Finals in Minehead, while Broughshane&#8217;s Josh Rock produced a finishing masterclass to also progress to the third round.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom5 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Gurney capitalised on former Masters champion Bunting being well off his best, averaging just 89.15, to advance to Saturday&#8217;s evening session with a 6-4 win and a meeting with tournament debutant Adam Lipscombe.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom5 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">&#8216;Superchin&#8217;, the 2018 Players Finals champion, averaged 95.47 in response but it was on the outer ring where he was deadliest, hitting 50 per cent of his doubles to dump out the Premier League star.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom5 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Rock, meanwhile, hammered England&#8217;s Scott Williams 6-0 thanks to four ton-plus finishes to also book his place in the last-32 where he will take on Krzystof Ratajski after the Polish star stunned European champion Gian van Veen.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom5 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">The Co Antrim man took out finishes of 107, 148, 100 and 123 on his way to a whitewash win that saw him average 107.36 as he looks to reach a third major Semi-Final of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Rock and Daryl Gurney Northern Ireland\u2019s Daryl Gurney stunned World No.4 Stephen Bunting to take his place&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587286,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[104087,1144,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-587285","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-adam-mckendry","9":"tag-northern-ireland","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115594833586592189","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}