The Irish women's senior side, coached by Kerry's James Weldon, will look to put their midweek defeat to the Netherlands behind them this evening.
They take on the Czech Republic from 5-o'clock in Tallaght as they continue their quest to qualify for EuroBasket 2023.
Weldon says he has a few “battered and bruised bodies, but nothing major” going into the game.
Ireland were beaten 82-60 by Netherlands side in Amsterdam on Thursday in their opening game of the campaign and Weldon believes it will be another physical encounter when they face the Czech Republic at the National Basketball Arena. “Yeah we think so, they’re a really big team as well, some serious talent in their team too, but look I mean we’ve got the experience of Thursday, two days ago at this stage, but I think that we’ve a better feel of what to expect from the start of the game and that’s going to be a great benefit for us.”
The Ireland squad landed back in Dublin on Friday evening and were back training on Saturday afternoon and Weldon revealed the areas of their game they’re working on ahead of Sunday’s contest. “We’ve been trying to do a better job on our our boards, we got out-rebounded by 20 the last day, so you know we’ve also been doing quite a lot on our close-outs defensively and you know just getting a lot of shots up as well, getting ourselves familiar with the home grounds again, so you know, I think look we’re kind of looking at it from the point of view is that we don’t want to make the same mistakes two, three times, we’ve got to learn and move on, and you know, I’m going to be a happy coach if we don’t repeat too many of the mistakes we made on Thursday night.”
The Czech Republic lost their opening game 66-60 to Belarus in Prague, but will go into the game with Ireland as favourites, and asked what is needed to cause an upset, Weldon said: “I think it’ll take a lot of things, I think we’re going to need the home support, I think we’re going to have to start much better than we did in the Netherlands, and I think we will. I think the crowd hopefully will definitely get behind us and drive the girls on. To quote the famous Ted Lasso, we have to believe in belief!”
“The Czechs performed really well in their group in the European Championships. They’ve lost one or two players, and they’re a little bit similar to us in the sense that they’ve drafted in quite a number of young players as well. They were obviously playing at the higher level the last number of years, with underage teams, probably on the fringes of the senior squad. You know, I’ve yet to see a bad Czech Republic team.”
Ireland co-captain Gráinne Dwyer also re-emphasised the importance of a good start against Czech Republic “We get a better start and we can control our controlables, and I think we’ll be in a better position. We were just looking at their game (Czech Republic) today, at tape (session) today, they’ve two big women inside, very physical, very fast. We just need to again control what we can do and we need to stop the ball, stick to what we’ve been told to do and yeah go forward.”
Ireland senior women’s 12-person squad:
Anna Kelly (Spirou Ladies Charleroi), Áine O’Connor (Leixlip Amenities Liffey Celtics), Claire Melia (The Address UCC Glanmire), Dayna Finn (Trinity Meteors), Edel Thornton (Singleton SuperValu Brunell), Gráinne Dwyer (Fr. Mathews), Hannah Thornton (DCU Mercy), Maura Fitzpatrick (Gloucester City Queens), Michelle Clarke (Killester), Rachel Huijsdens (DCU Mercy), Sorcha Tiernan (Leixlip Amenities Liffey Celtics), Sarah Kenny (Trinity Meteors)
