Ireland's last major preparation in the build-up to next year's International Cricket Council (ICC) Tournament in Toronto begins this week in Glasgow when the European Championship gets under way.

Ireland won the first European Championship in Copenhagen in 1996, when the Triple Crown was also won, but did badly in the last tournament two years ago, and, of course, narrowly failed to qualify in Kuala Lumpur for last year's World Cup. So the Glasgow event will be vital for national coach Ken Rutherford as he gets ready for the challenge of Toronto.

"You can't over-emphasise the importance of the European Cup in the build-up to Toronto", said John Wright, honorary secretary of the Irish Cricket Union. "But to add to our problems it now seems likely that the English Counties are going to look for compensation for releasing guys like Ed and company. For instance, when Scotland looked for the release of Gavin Hamilton, Yorkshire demanded £30,000 to allow him play in last year's World Cup.

"Now, they didn't actually pay that, but what the ECB Board is going to recommend to the Counties is that the payment for release of such players should be their pro-rata wage, so if guys like ours are on about £24,000 for a six-month contract, it will cost the Irish Cricket Union around £5,000 for the release of each player, so we could be looking at say £16,000 to £20,000." said Wright.

Luck hasn't been exactly on Rutherford's side since he succeeded Mike Hendrick as national coach. Ireland did reasonably well in the Emerging Nations Tournament in Zimbabwe, but that was followed by the NatWest disastrous defeat by Shropshire, the all-but-useless rain-affected matches against the MCC and the non-event recent Triple Crown in Wales, with only the two one-day internationals against Zimbabwe being the sole pointers to form.

So the European Championship, in which Ireland is in Division One, along with England, Denmark, Holland, Scotland and Italy, will be the acid test.