Barely a week after being unveiled as Bermuda Football Association's new director of youth development, Kenny Thompson has reactivated the Island's Under-17 national team in preparation for October's World Cup qualifiers.

And with school out for the Easter break, some 44 youngsters have already embarked on what Thompson dubbed a week-long "observation course."

However, he is still to begin working as director but instead in his capacity as Under-16 national youth coach.

With such a large nucleus of players at his disposal, Thompson has placed the youngsters into three groups with training beginning at 10 a.m. for the first group, 11.30 a.m. for the second and 2 p.m. for the final group.

Aided by North Village head coach Scott Morton, also a qualified BFA staff coach, and former Hotels International stalwart Alan Philpott as equipment manager, Thompson has launched Bermuda's preparations for the next Under -17 World Cup finals to be held in Finland in July, 2003.

"From our perspective as coaches our objective is observation," said Thompson yesterday. "So it's not going to be a whole lot of tactical and technical development, although they will be involved in exercises over the course of the week that will require tactical thinking.

"Our aim is to just observe their level of tactical and technical expertise and basic match-related exercises from Monday through Wednesday, and then they will proceed on to full scale matches from Thursday through Saturday. At that point we will be basically observing the players under real match conditions and then we will make our selections based on that."

Meanwhile at BAA Field the BFA are holding a junior women's soccer camp aimed at scouting the Island's future female stars.

Camp director Vance Brown said that so far the youngsters had been enthusiastic and receptive towards the week-long venture.

"Basically what's happening here is that we are trying to introduce football to the younger girls to see what type of interest we can generate," said Brown. "As you can see, we have over 90 girls here so there's a lot of interest.

"The courses will be going on for the entire week as school is now out. We will be offering football sessions in the morning and fun activities in the afternoon.

"We are going to be having skills competitions where the girls will be graded into three categories, gold, silver and bronze and they will have to obtain a certain amount of points to make each grade instead of having one winner."

Brown also noted that the camp was now full to capacity and that the day's events kicked off at 8.30 a.m., lasting until 5.30 p.m.

"This is the first time that this has happened and hopefully we can extend it into a little league for them and also have something for them during the summer and next year," he added.

"At the end of the camp everyone will be a winner."

Rude Girls won an unprecedented fourth straight Konica Cup title after edging by Dandy Stars 3-2 at BAA Field on Saturday night.

Rude Girls scored through Chevonne Furbert, Tamisha Darrell and an own goal. Stars replied through Tinal Wall and Lindsy Ford.

Rude Girls are now poised to pull off the double when they take to the field for this Sunday's Women's FA Cup Final against Hemisphere Royals.