Austria hope for home crowd boost

The Women's World Championship 2015 Qualification Europe resumes on Wednesday ( 3 December) with the qualification tournaments starting in Groups 1 and 2 and the final two matched being in played in Group 3.

For all qualification matches the EHF live ticker is available

Czech Republic are the first participants confirmed for the play-offs in June 2015 after they won the tournament in Group 4 last week.

Iceland are likely to follow them from Group 3 already on Wednesday. After having won their first two matches against Italy, all Iceland need is one more point from the matches against FYR Macedonia on 3 and 6 December.

In Group 1 Slovenia are the firm favourites. The team of head coach Marta Bon only narrowly missed out on the Women's EHF EURO 2014 and beat World Championship 2013 runners-up Serbia in their EHF EURO qualification campaign.

The other teams in Group 1 are Belarus, hosts Switzerland and Greece. Only the top ranked team from each group qualifies for the play-offs.

In Group 2 hosts Austria face Turkey, Portugal and Israel.

Very much like Slovenia, Austria were close to qualifying for the EHF EURO 2014 as they were only ousted by Ukraine in the two teams' last EHF EURO 2014 qualifier back in June this year.

"As we enjoy the home advantage, we are the favourites and we definitely have to leave Portugal and Israel behind us," says Austria head coach Herbert Müller.

"The game against Turkey will most likely be the decisive one. They are probably our strongest opponents en route to the play-offs."

The qualification play-offs will be played in June 2015; the Women's World Championship 2015 takes place in Denmark in December next year.