If Olympic medals were issued for coping in the face of adversity, Chris Finch and the Great Britain team would already be assured of a place on the podium in London four years from now. Britain play the first of their six group games against Israel in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, in the qualifying round for the 2009 European Championship finals (EuroBasket) in Poland, a group that also matches Finch's squad with the Czech Republic and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Daunting as any visit to the Nokia Arena can be, the meeting with Israel will come as a relief to Finch, the coach, who can concentrate on trying to lead a Britain team to EuroBasket for the first time rather than having to deal with the litany of problems that have hampered his programme this summer.

The debut of Ben Gordon will not materialise this year because the guard, who has spent the past four seasons with the Chicago Bulls, is concentrating on his club future. More damaging and unexpected is that Britain are also without Robert Archibald, the Scottish forward who withdrew from the squad with a knee injury only to report to Málaga, his Spanish club, for pre-season training last week declaring himself fully fit.

Kieron Achara, another Scot, walked out on the team last week under pressure to sign a deal with Upim Bologna, of Italy, joining Mike Lenzly and Dan Clark, who had earlier withdrawn from the Britain squad under pressure from their clubs.

Andy Betts, the experienced centre, has stayed in London with a back injury and there are doubts over Richard Midgley (knee), Nick George (ankle) and Dzaflo Larkai (knee).

Potentially the greatest blow, however, has been the saga surrounding the insurance of Luol Deng, Gordon's Chicago team-mate, who enjoyed a stunning international debut summer last year in leading Britain to six victories in as many games and promotion to the A division of Europe.

It had appeared for much of the past two weeks that Deng, 23, would not be available but British Basketball unearthed the necessary additional £230,000 premium to insure an old back injury and, after practising today and tomorrow, the forward will be in Britain's starting line-up.

“It's great to have him back,” Finch said. “I just hope we can prepare him properly in the short time we have left. He's going to be excited and we have to get him up to speed and stem his desire to do too much for us.”

Without Deng, Britain's preparations have been further disturbed by a plague of injuries that have affected the majority of the squad during an eight-match warm-up campaign. Only four of those games have ended in victory, although the past two over the weekend, against Bosnia and Portugal in Turkey, were particularly rewarding because a team reduced to nine players through injuries won close games.

The Bosnia victory is all the more meaningful given that Britain face them twice this month in more meaningful circumstances. While a top-two finish should be enough to carry Britain through to next summer's finals, an arguably more important goal is avoiding last place and the 2009 relegation tournament.

Should Britain be relegated back to the B division, the earliest they could return to the top flight would be 2011, effectively ruling them out of a place in the London Olympics because Fiba, the sport's world governing body, has stated that Britain must be in the A division to be granted the place as host nation.

“I have heard talk about relegation, but I'm not thinking in those terms,” Finch said. “My aim is to qualify for the European Championships and if we do that, 2012 and everything else will take care of itself.”

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