Ireland women's coach Mark Scannell: We must use our home court advantage

Ireland’s re-emergence as a player on the international basketball stage won a huge boost last year when the country’s Under 18 girls ranked second in the European Championships. Now the senior women’s squad look to build on that momentum in Cork this week.

Question: Ireland’s pool opponents are Norway, Luxembourg and Cyprus in that order of fixtures. What can you tell us?

Mark Scannell: There’s a huge emphasis on the first game (tonight) against Norway. Ideally, I would have liked to play Luxembourg first because I’ve the most knowledge and research done on them. We have a brilliant video review suite at the Mardkye and I have all the work done from the recent Poland trip and the Luxembourg stuff from three games against them last year. I could tell you what Luxembourg are having for their tea. But with Norway I have had to go and basically look at their roster and check where their individual players are based.”