MURRAY WANTS ONE MORE HURRAH

Gareth Murray has admitted he will postpone his plans to retire if Great Britain beat Germany and qualify for the 2022 EuroBasket finals.

The Glasgow Rocks player-coach, 36, is primed to earn his 61st cap at the neutral venue of Podgorica this afternoon after being recalled for the crunch clash.

Victory, combined with defeat for Montenegro against France this evening, would provide the ideal stage for the Arbroath-born forward to take a bow and hang up his boots in 18 months time. But there are no firm guarantees over a perfect farewell, he concedes, as the aches and pains of two decades of pushing himself to the limit begin to bite.

“Of course, as a player, you always want to keep playing but it’s whether the body will let me. I just don’t know. We’ll see. Hopefully, when we get through this season and then into the offseason, I can get back in the weight room and get the body ready again. But if we don’t qualify, it’d be time to call it a day for GB, for sure.”

With the Germans guaranteed a spot as the co-hosts of the finals, GB will hope to avoid getting drawn into a precarious numbers game in Monday’s concluding round of fixtures, when they meet the powerful French. To secure a ticket to EuroBasket, their results in the next 72 hours must simply be better than the Montenegrins. With the sides level on points, a valuable head-to-head tiebreaker over their rivals could prove the critical differential.

Murray, who didn’t make his international debut until 2013, will soak up the opportunity all the more lest this trip is his last. “No matter what’s happening. I always look forward to GB because my job is a lot easier. The BBL is BBL. But when you play at a higher level, all I have to focus on are two things: making shots and playing defence. That’s it. Plus it’s always fun playing with these guys.

“At the same time, I always try to learn something. And it was one of the main things when I was coming to GB teams, I was always trying to listen to the coaches here and adopt some of the things that they’re doing. Maybe not to put them straight into what I’m trying to do at the Rocks, but maybe to just have ideas. So that keeps my mind stretched as well as giving me ideas for coaching.”

EuroBasket qualifiers, Group G (Podgorica). Germany v Great Britain (4pm), Montenegro v France (6.45).