They may have hung up their boots for good at the highest level, but Ralph Bean Jr and Anthony Mouchette have too much invested emotionally in football to spend their Sundays skipping pebbles across the beach.

So they have decided on the next best thing — putting pen to paper and joining the The Royal Gazette’s team of football writers for the 2017-18 season, which begins in earnest this weekend.

Bean, the former North Village and Bermuda striker who also tried his hand at coaching, completed his final season in May and now aims to build on the promise shown in Showoff magazine, where his contributions have included a Q&A interview with Jason Hayward, president of the Bermuda Public Services Union, and profiles on Bermudian footballers plying their trade in Britain and Ireland as professionals.

Mouchette, a standout referee for much of the past 20 years, has been a loyal servant to the game since he broke through as a speedy winger in his neighbourhood Devonshire Cougars team. When he was not seen in the middle with a whistle to his mouth, he could be found on the softball diamond as an umpire, alongside the netball court as a coach or in the boxing ring as a referee — such has been his commitment to officialdom.

We believe that with their knowhow, Bean and Mouchette will be the stars for us that they have been for their teams and organisations, so that football’s loss will be football’s gain.