The newly launched Premier League International Cup makes a stop off at Princes Park, home of Dartford FC this week.

The stadium receives yet more international prestige and honour on Wednesday evening when Benfica U21’s play their German counterparts from Schalke – a fact acknowledged by Darts Chairman Dave Skinner.

Mr Skinner told KSN: “It’s a newly formed competition which if I’m honest we only heard about last week. It seems that UEFA didn’t agree with the youngsters travelling between the countries and in the end the Premier League stepped in to host the whole thing in what has now become a four-group tournament involving some of the top Premier League Under-21 and elite development teams from England and other European leagues.”

The tournament began last week with a Group B game which saw Athletic Bilbao beat West Ham at Upton Park.

In addition to West Ham, the English clubs involved in the tournament are: Chelsea, Everton, Fulham, Leicester City, Manchester City, Norwich, and Sunderland, whilst the international clubs are Athletic Bilbao, Benfica, Borussia Monchengladbach, Celtic, Schalke, Porto, PSV Eindhoven, and Villarreal.

“We’ve hosted an England C international already at Princes and in this competition we’ve been initially allocated the game between Benfica and Schalke and we’re all glad here at the club that the first team don’t have a game so that as many of our officials and supporters can come along and enjoy what we hope will be a great evening.”

“The two English teams in this group by the way are Leicester and Manchester City.” Smiling, Mr Skinner continued, “I don’t know if they’ll be any Arabs about in the crowd watching from City, but I do expect all of our coaches to be here with their notebooks as it does promise to be quite an evening – and they might learn something!”

The tournament will run as groups between October and the end of January. Clubs will play each team in their group once and all matches, including those between international teams, will be played in England.

Upon completion of the group stages the winners and runners-up from each group will progress to the quarter-finals, semi-finals and final, all to be played as single-leg ties in England.

Asked whether the Darts would like to host any future matches in the tournament, Mr Skinner said, “Of course we would. It’s a heck of an honour to be asked to host one, and I hope that the organisers will enjoy their evening with us and come again.”

“It’s half term and there’s not a lot else on so we’re hoping for a decent crowd.”

Kick off is as 7:00pm and admission is £3.00 adults and £1.00 children