RAYMOND VAN BARNEVELD will represent the Netherlands in the bwin World Cup of Darts alongside Michael van Gerwen in Hamburg this weekend.
The five-time World Champion won the inaugural PDC World Cup of Darts event in 2010 when playing with Co Stompe, and has also played in the other two stagings of the tournament.
Here, he looks back on the previous years of the tournament and discusses the Netherlands' chances of taking the title in Germany on Sunday evening.
It was a great memory in 2010. I remember that it was really snowy and we missed our flight - we thought we were going to miss the tournament but had one chance on Friday morning and we flew straight to Newcastle, and won the competition!
England had a big shock because they lost to Spain - Toni Alcinas and Carlos Rodriguez were fantastic - and it opened the door for Holland to win the championship.
In the final against Wales, I think we both beat Barrie Bates and Mark Webster beat Co and then me, but then we won the Pairs game and it was very exciting.
It was great to win the tournament and we were very happy. Co was really motivated and together as a team we were very strong. It was great to win the first World Cup, especially for Co because he never became World Champion (in Singles).
The next year I played with Vincent van der Voort and we played very well there to reach the semi-finals, but he was very ill on the Sunday.
He was maybe 25-30 percent and we almost had to pull out because he could hardly stand. He was really ill but he tried, and we lost the game against Australia. It was sad for us because Vincent's a fantastic player and we could have won it.
Last year I played with Michael and we had a lot of expectations, but maybe because of that we relied on each other, and then you forget to focus and that's what happened against Finland (losing in the Last 16).
The Finnish guys played awesome darts. We expected to win and weren't 100 percent focused in that match, and we've promised that this year we're going to do it differently.
Pairs is a different game to Singles because you have to wait for three turns. It's like waiting on a very slow player and it's very hard to focus.
A lot of top teams went out [early] last year and there were big shocks, Scotland, Australia and us. I think there were one or two teams who could have beaten England last year - South Africa and Japan - and they got away with it and went on to win the competition.
For the first time now, I'm playing with the same partner and we get on well and believe in this.
Michael's unbelievable at the moment. Two years ago he took the world by storm and he still is the man; World Champion and world number one. If you're going to pick someone to team up with you'd pick him, so I'm very lucky to partner him.
We're playing for our country and that's something else, because our hopes in Holland are van Barneveld and van Gerwen and we are a team representing the Netherlands. I love to play for my country.
Watch the bwin World Cup of Darts live on Sky Sports HD1 from Friday June 6-Sunday June 8.