Phil Waghorn today gave his cautious backing to efforts to encourage British players to shine in the BBL.

But he would love to see more long-term planning put in place.

Waghorn and his Genesis Brighton Bears travel tonight to a Scottish Rocks outfit who have contributed two players to the England team at the Commonwealth Games.

BBL clubs have opted to field just three overseas players each next season to encourage domestic talent. By sheer coincidence, the announcement came as Waghorn was being told his role as basketball development officer for Sussex will be discontinued at the end of this month when funding runs out.

The Bears coach said: "What the league have done is a positive move to improve the quality of English players.

"But it has to be a long term process and I hope there is not a U-turn if the standard of play initially goes down.

"I don't see any long term planning to help us prepare for the 2012 Olympics. It's all short term hits.

"I've been doing the Sussex job for seven years under a couple of different guises and I believe I've made a difference.

"But it needs to be continued over 15 or 20 years. Every year the funding has gone down, now it has totally stopped."

Bears' nine-man squad includes six Brits though one of them, Ronnie Baker, is away at the Commonwealths and the team have missed his spark off the bench.

They flew north from Stansted today expecting a tough contest, despite Rocks having to replace England duo Germayne Forbes and Julius Joseph with Justin Phoenix and Joel Burns.

Waghorn added: "We seem to have trouble pulling together for the full 40 minutes."