Murray Treseder is the ramrod of straight-talking coaches, he is the Bill Sweetenham of Wheelchair Basketball and his not happy.

The GB wheelchair basketball team have just smashed Sweden, the European champions, 66-47 at the Paralympic World Cup in Manchester. It should feel like revenge after defeat by Sweden in the final of the European championships in September. The British players are subdued at the end and it soon becomes obvious why.

“I’m angry,” are the first words out of Tresder’s mouth. “Because the team we’re playing against had one of the best players in the world not here and their next best player got refereed out of the game, I reckon those two are worth about 35 points. With the talent we’ve got compared with the talent they’ve got that was a terrible result I get no feeling of satisfaction out of winning that game.

“This is our final selection and there are some guys who will be very disappointed that they did not take their opportunities there. Two here will probably make our team (of 12 for the Beijing Paralympics in September).

“Yesterday we played very well and beat a team (USA, 58-51) that we had no right to beat. The difficulty is that Simon (Munn) is not getting any younger and we have these big kids that need to take his place but they keep having brainfarts out on the court. Dan Highcock, eight minutes, did nothing. Joe Beswick, ten minutes, nothing. It is so inconsistent, yesterday Joe Beswick was sensational at the end of the game.”

Treseder arrived in February 2007 and to replace Dave Titmuss. Titmuss, who spent eight years coaching the GB team, was given the title of performance director, but was never likely to survive.

Treseder, was poached from the Australia wheelchair basketball team, whom he had coached for six years. He took over one of the Paralympics best funded sports, receiving over around £2 million for the four year cycle after securing a lucky bronze in Athens.

Like Sweetenham, the hard-bitten Australian who arrived to shake-up British swimming, Treseder found a culture he did not understand.

“The first thing I had to do was change the culture,” he said. “It was wrong. The arrogance, the security created by being fully-funded athletes, I had a lot of guys in Australia who worked twice as hard as these guys and didn’t get paid anything for it. As important is the women’s programme which has been disgracefully neglected.

“The other thing is that we had an old team and there was such a gap between the 12 funded athletes and the other guys. The funding was reviewed after Netherlands (at the world championships in 2006) and it dropped about 25 per cent because we finished fifth.”

Treseder is not optimistic for their hopes in the Beijing Paralympics.

“We played to our absolute potential in the European Championships and our difficulty is that the best three teams are not in Europe. They’re Canada, Australia and the USA.

“Yeah (Beijing will be hard), particularly as we have one eye on 2012, so I think it would be wasted opportunity if we don’t take a couple of kids, on the basis that history will show that you perform better in your second Olympics than you will in your first.

“I came into the job knowing that we might have to take a step back to take a step forward.”

Is he under pressure for results now, though? “No, I’m here til April 2013.”

Is there any danger of him getting complacent? “That’s not a word in my vocabulary.”

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