Greece’s volleyball side is applying the finishing touches to its all-important European Championship play-off games with Turkey on September 5 and 12, with coach Gordon Mayforth acknowledging on Wednesday that the first game in Ankara will be a tough one.

We have already discussed with the guys that we will be 12 players against 7,000 fans, but they will not have any problems.

“We have already discussed with the guys that we will be 12 players against 7,000 fans, but they will not have any problems.

“I have realised due to the history of the two countries that they will be 12 Greeks!

“This will certainly be a difficult court full of fans,” said the American manager in a press conference in Athens.

He saw his players suffer two defeats and get a draw in three friendly games with Egypt in Athens last week in quite disappointing performances, but he maintains his optimism.

“Yesterday’s [i.e. August 31] was the best training session we had in all of August.

“The players are beginning to get into the process of these games and you can see that in their eyes.

“Our preparation is coming to its end and is getting better every day, particularly after the friendlies with Egypt.

“We are ready to qualify. We have two days left for some fine-tuning, but everything is okay,” Mayforth stated.

The winner of the home-and-away play-offs advances to next year’s European Championship finals in Austria and the Czech Republic.

“We will be 100 percent ready on Sunday to play for qualification, which we all need, first of all us the athletes, the federation and Greek volleyball,” said Greece captain Ilias Lappas.

“This is a major competition that will go a long way towards helping volleyball and certainly the Greek team will have to be present,” he added.

The 12 players to travel to Ankara for the first leg are Dimitris Tzourits, Apostolos Armenakis, Giorgos Petreas, Thanos Terzis, Giorgos Stephanou, Costas Prousalis, Theoklitos Karipidis, Andreas Andreadis, Gerasimos Kanellos, Ilias Lappas, Andreas Frangos and Achilleas Papadimitriou.