Having pipped rival Mark Trott at the polls during Bermuda Football Association?s (BFA) annual general meeting on Wednesday night, a victorious Larry Mussenden wasted little time yesterday laying out his immediate plans for the future.

Mussenden, who defeated Trott by a single vote to retain his position as head of local football?s governing body, has now strongly urged all those involved in the sport to perform their roles to the ?highest possible standards? in order to raise the overall game in Bermuda.

?First of all we have to look at our standing committees and new executive and then assign chairpersons from that executive to all of those standing committees. These are the committees responsible for running football on a day to day basis,? said Mussenden.

?We also must look at the committees that we do have and see if they need to be refocused or new committees need to be added.?

The BFA president believes his administration is ?very talented? and expects great things of them in the future.

?I am expecting from our executive that they will be able to accept the tasks and mandates from those committees and be able to take concepts and develop them into realistic plans or programmes and execute those programmes to reach our goals and objectives,? he added.

?That?s how we intend to deliver the service of the committees and executives to the football family of Bermuda. It?s a high standard, but I am confident our executive will be able to reach those standards. And that?s how football will develop and continue to grow in Bermuda.?

Inviting an overseas team from either the Caribbean or Europe to compete in the Dudley Eve Trophy competition next month, Bermuda?s involvement in the Digicel Cup in St.Vincent this month and garnering additional sponsorship to help fund the association?s various leagues are just a few of the BFA?s short term goals, Mussenden revealed.

?National team training has been going on and we just need to solidify all of the administrative planning it takes to send a Bermuda team away to compete,? he added. ?And we have already been involved in initial discussions to bring in a team from either the Caribbean or a smaller country in Europe for the Dudley Eve for an incoming tour over the Christmas break.?

Mussenden also hopes to address some of the problems presently affecting the Under-17 league in the near future.

?We would like to get all of our youth coaches working with the association?s youth director (Kenny Thompson) towards forming educational coaching courses,? he added. ?We want to ensure that our Under-17 youth league ? which has encountered some problems in the past ? starts and is completed successfully without some of the issues we had before.?

Last season the Under-17 league was abandoned due to escalating violence at matches.

Reflecting upon his narrow victory over Trott at the AGM, Mussenden said it just went to show that there were others who could vie for the position of president of local football.

?I thought the election was good for football,? he said. ?It shows that we can go through the process of having an election and having the clubs express their choice of who they want as president.

?But I am confident affiliates will now support the president of the day ? no matter who they voted for ? and that certainly from my point of view the executive and I can lead the association on behalf of all the affiliates and everyone else involved in local football.

?And that is the beauty of the democratic process in our football family in Bermuda. The issues that were raised are certainly issues that we have to address and I now look forward to addressing those issues immediately in going forward from strength to strength.?