Chris Finch, the Great Britain coach, will keep Kieron Achara, the forward, on the bench against the Czech Republic in a European Championship qualifying match at London's O2 Arena this afternoon as punishment for walking out on the national team.

Achara, 25, left the squad two weeks ago for trials with Cantu, the Italian club, but having won a contract there, he asked to return to the national team and Britain, with the help of Fiba, the sport's world governing body, ensured that the player was released by his club.

However, the forward will be a spectator with Finch sticking by the team who came within half a second of beating Israel in Wednesday's group opener in Tel Aviv.

Finch has lost a number of key individuals after European clubs put pressure on their players in recent years and he said: “This is a victory for British Basketball and it shows we are not going to let these clubs bully our players any more. We are happy to have him back, but, also, we don't appreciate the way things went down over his departure. He wanted to come back and we made that happen, but he has no birthright to a place on the team. Now he has to earn his way back into our squad.

“He is not entirely forgiven and this is an opportunity to send a message to everybody - to European clubs that try and bully our players into not playing for GB and to the players, that they are not going to use us to profile themselves then move on.

“It's also a message to those players who have been around all the time - while players like Kieron walk away - that they have not gone unnoticed either.”

Andy Betts, the 31-year-old center, will have a fitness test today but again appears set to miss out with a back problem. The heartbreaking 102-92 over-time defeat by Israel could return to plague Britain, with only the group winners and the best three of the four second-place teams guaranteed a place in Eurobasket (European basketball Championship) in Poland next year.

“Our initial aim was to win the group and I think it can still be won,” Finch said. “It is a big if, but if we win our five remaining games I think that will be enough to get us through. But we will know a lot more after the Czech game.”

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