he suffered a freak injury during Harrisburg Heat's 21-13 loss to conference rivals Baltimore Blast.

Bascome, the Pennsylvania team's best player this season and a leading candidate for the indoor National Professional Soccer League's Most Valuable Player award, suffered a strained right quadriceps muscle barely five minutes into the contest while attempting a shot, going down untouched and drawing gasps among the 5,626 in attendance at Farm Show Arena.

Trainers immediately started therapy on the ailing limb in hopes of having the midfielder ready for the start of the post-season's first round, where Harrisburg face Buffalo in a best-of-three series.

"It's the middle quad and is normally a two-to-four week injury, but there are some things we can do to speed it up,'' said chief trainer Craig Sherrick.

"We have an underwater treadmill at our office which can cut the time in half.

"Sunday is going to be a challenge . .. some luck will have to occur, but, most likely, the following game should not be a problem.'' However, bothering Bascome almost more than the injury itself was the timing, specifically the fact that Friday's match was a meaningless one, with Harrisburg already having confirmed home-field advantage throughout the play-offs, having won the American Conference and boasting a league best 24-16 record.

Furthermore players and coaches had previously discussed and weighed the injury possibility, deciding to rest three regulars and have Bascome and leading scorer Gino DiFlorio play no more than a half.

"It's frustrating because this was a game that we didn't need, and the coach asked all the starting players whether we wanted to play, bearing in mind that we could get injured at any time, but I didn't think that it would happen in the first five minutes, so it's very frustrating,'' said Bascome, a definite fan favourite, something emphasised by the Bermudian's prominence on much of the Heat's paraphernalia distributed at the arena.

"It hurts because you look at the whole team and how it might affect them. We worked hard all year together, and it's good that we have a team that is willing to work together, but we need to make sure that we have all of our players healthy.'' Continued on page 29 Bascome frustration Continued from page 27 The situation bought back memories of four years previous, when the Bermudian popped a calf muscle while running for the ball early during the play-offs and had to sit out the rest of the season.

Bascome noted that the latest ailment did not feel nearly as severe as that in 1997 and that he would indeed find a way to come back and help the squad to what he hopes will be a first-ever championship.

"The play-offs is where it counts,'' he said. " I don't care if I walk with a limp, they have to strap me up or what, my concern is that I'm playing.'' Likewise with a keen interest in the health of Bascome was team co-owner Rodney Rumberger, who was the first to meet Bascome on the way to the locker-room.

"I cringed when it happened. I met him at the locker room tonight when he came in at the end of the first quarter,'' said Rumberger, who has Rex Herbert as his partner in the venture.

"We fought very hard, played 40 games to get into the position that we are and this game didn't mean very much tonight, and what happened to David was exactly what we didn't want.

"We want to go into the play-offs as strong as we can be, we were able to get a lot of younger guys some good experience out there against the Blast, and hopefully we can make a nice long run in the play-offs.'' David Bascome: injured early on.