Peter de Backer is playing with painkillers

PORTO - He steps on the plane to Porto today, where he will play the preliminary rounds of the European Cup tomorrow, but Peter de Backer is certainly not in top condition. The Belgian, who plays for Andernos, suffers a painful injury: a shifted disc between the vertebrae. ,,I could hardly move a couple of days, now is a little better.''

De Backer will play the matches in Porto with a belt around his waist and painkillers. ,,The physiotherapist has advised me to do exercises as much as possible, to replace the disk in his normal position.''

It is the first time that this injury occurs. ,,I had some blocked vertebrae before, which is a hereditary thing. My father had it too.''
De Backer would not pass up the preliminaries. ,,Then it will be almost hopeless to seed for the finals, now we do could have a chance when we're with the team we use to play.''

Andernos is in the group with Porto (Daniel Sanchez, Semih Sayginer, Joao Ferreira, Manuel Santos Oliveira), BC Elite Vienna (Andreas Horvath Andreas Kronlachner, Thomas Wagner, Manfred Müller) and Zeytinburnu (Hakam Incekara, Mehmet Can Capak, Soner Tas, Serdar Bas).

Jean Reverchon feels far from fit too. The Frenchman is suffering from tendinitis in the shoulder. ,,I have been a few days out to play, but let's this weekend is better.''

Reverchon plays for Clichy Montmartre, where Michael Nilsson is the substitute for Dick Jaspers, who would play initially for his Portuguese team, but due to financial problems of the sponsor he had to withdraw.

Clichy now plays with Eddy Merckx, Nilsson, Richard Bitalis and Reverchon. The team is divided in the preliminaries in Valencia with Gandia (Leppens, Jimenez), Koninklijke Kortrijkse (Brants, Blauwblomme) and probably the Italian Catania, but yesterday there were strong rumors that the team will withdraw from the preliminaries.