Irish must rise to daunting Swiss task

THEY may be more hopeful than confident of reversing the result of their last meeting but the Irish men’s senior basketball team will play with passion when they face Switzerland in Sunday’s European championship game in Geneva.

“Switzerland is a huge undertaking by any standard,” Ireland coach, Greg Gurr, insisted. “And our last visit there does not hold any happy memories at all. It was not a very good performance and Switzerland took us apart. It is quite daunting, first of all to have drawn them in our group again and then to have drawn them away for our very first game in the new campaign.”

Preparations for the campaign began some weeks ago with intensive training camps in Dublin, Tralee and Oranmore and were completed last weekend at the National Basketball Arena where they lost to Norway and then performed superbly against Austria and Iceland.

Gurr was able to see some of the younger players in his team excel — Donnie McGrath, Emmet Donnelly, who started in place of the injured Pat Burke against Austria, and Justin Naughton were particularly impressive additions to the experience provided by the likes of Mike Bree and Dan Callaghan.

“I was very happy with the way Pat Burke, Emmet Donnelly and Baker Dunleavy grafted into the team,” he said.

“We were technically correct, emotionally brave and it was a good defensive effort. Having said that, we were pretty ordinary against Norway in our first game but once we got our defence going the whole plan came together much quicker than I thought it would.

“But we are looking at a very young team and I would consider ourselves to be in the course of bit of rebuilding that is going quite well.

“Last weekend we learned a lot about ourselves.

“We learned we can play a very high standard of defence and now sustaining that for long periods of the game is the aim.”

Gurr travelled recently to see the Swiss in a friendly against France and was impressed.

“Really Switzerland should not be in the same league as France but they were tied at half time and while France won well in the end they were made to work very hard,” he said.

“On Sunday we will be looking for victory if possible. But our primary objective is to be as competitive as we possibly can. We want to keep the score close.”

“Like everyone wearing an Irish shirt, this team will play with a lot of pride and passion.

“Regardless of the sport, you are in it to win it and this team does not like to be beaten.”

On Saturday week they have Romania in the National Basketball Arena while on September 15 there will be a big double header with the senior women playing the Netherlands and Ireland playing Cyprus, both in the European championships.