BRANSGORE star Scott Mitchell is this week relishing the prospect of taking on the world.

The Dorset darts ace is set to lead England at the WDF World Cup of Darts in Romania, which gets underway on Monday.

The former world champion told the Daily Echo: “It was four years ago that I last went to a World Cup with England and we won it. We would love to repeat that feat.

“This really is going to be tough - 10, 15, 20 years ago you’d know it was a foregone conclusion that if England turned up, we had the best players in the world and we’d win it.

“But the way that darts has developed, and it’s developed so fast in other countries, it’s not like that anymore when you go to a World Cup.”

Scotty Dog will join forces with Nigel Heydon, Martin Atkins and Dan Day in a bid to claim victory at the 55-team competition – where points are accumulated in team, pairs and singles matches.

England are set to face up against France, Catalonia and the Isle of Man in Group 11 of the team event.

Mitchell has been drawn to take on Royden Lam in the singles, who is part of a strong Hong Kong outfit.

He added: “As an individual, you pick up points for the team.

“The further you go in the singles you get more points. The next day you have two pairs setups and the most amount of points is winning the team game.

“If you’re going to win the World Cup, as a team game you play one leg at a time, the four of you go round in a circle playing a leg at a time in a different order. First to nine points and you get a point per leg.

“That is such a hard format, because we don’t play that anywhere, even in local league darts.

“If you get that format right, that’s where the most points are available at the World Cup. You cannot win the World Cup without doing well in the team event.”

Asked who he felt would be England’s biggest threats, Mitchell added: “I think there’s a lot of nations that could really do well. Wales and Scotland both look really good.

“You can never rule the Dutch out of it, you can never rule the Germans too far away, the Belgians are always somewhere close. It really is going to be a tight thing.”