team for the first time against overseas opposition at the National Stadium this weekend.

A team representing the Bermuda Football Association, comprising at least five men and five women, will take on the Virginia Pyro Coed Adult Soccer Club in two friendly matches on Saturday and Sunday evenings.

And the BFA hope the event could lead to the Island eventually staging an annual coed tournament.

"This will be the first officially sanctioned coed football match involving an overseas team to be held in the history of Bermuda,'' said BFA general secretary David Sabir.

"This will assist our women national team players as they ready themselves for the CFU Women's Championship Group Finals in Haiti in July.

"It is our intention that this event will provide a catalyst for a much larger annual coed event that may possibly be held in Bermuda.

"We have already been advised that other teams in the US have expressed an interest in what we are doing with the Virginia Pyros and may be keen in participating in a larger event, should it be organised.'' The Pyros have been playing coed soccer since 1995 and in the first US national coed championships in Houston in September last year, they finished seventh.

Pyros president Theodore Adams III said: "We hope this will result in the broadening of coed soccer, not only in Virginia, but also in the mid-Atlantic region and overseas.''