A new chapter in the history of domestic football will be written tonight when the Island’s first professional team take on the Harrisburg City Islanders in their opening United Soccer League Division Two clash.

Seven of the Bermuda Hogges’ 23-man squad are unavailable for tonight’s game at the National Sports Centre — but coach Paul Scope insisted yesterday he was confident the remaining players would acquit themselves well on their USL debut.

Raymond Beach and Seion Darrel (Regiment duty), Kwame Steede (knee injury), Devaun DeGraff and Lloyd Holder (religious reasons) as well as Clevon Hill and Shakai Crockwell (suspended) are all sidelined, leaving the Hogges management team of Scope, Kyle Lightbourne Shaun Goater to pick their starting eleven from a squad of 16 — including Goater and Lightbourne themselves.

But with DeGraff and Holder guaranteed to return for Sunday’s second game against the same team — who many consider the leading contenders for the Division Two championship — Scope was unconcerned about the high number of absentees.

“Obviously we’d like to have everybody fit and available, but we’re allowed a squad of 18, we’ve got 16 players and we can certainly construct a decent team with the players we’ve got,” he said.

“We’re not short of players in any area. Our intention has always been to rotate the squad throughout the season. We’ll obviously try to win as many games as we can and be as competitive as we can, but the main aim is to give all of the players exposure to playing in a competitive professional league.

“Both Sammy (DeGraff) and Lloyd will be back for the Sunday game so all-in-all I think we’re in pretty good shape and we’ve got enough players for the two games.

“Kwame is making good progress after knee surgery but is not quite ready — we’re looking for him to be fit by the time we play Cincinnati (Kings on May 9).”

With the domestic season dragging on into mid-April, the Hogges squad have only had three full weeks of training as a unit, Scope said, and he admitted they would probably not be firing on all cylinders until the mid-point of the five-month season.

And while he’s not expecting great things this year — predicting the Hogges should finish around mid-table if all goes to plan — Scope argued that over long-term the Hogges project would work wonders for the overall standard of domestic football.

“The whole reason we are doing this is because it was obvious to us that Bermuda football needed something extra to help take it to the next level,” he said.

“All of us at the Hogges were delighted when Government announced they would be investing heavily in football and as a consequence, that the national team will be a lot more active than it has been in the past.

“So when you combine that with the fact that many of the national team players will also be spending their summer’s competing in a professional league, over the course of a few years it is highly likely that the standard will improve significantly. It’s certainly not going to happen overnight, but it gives us a great chance of being more competitive in the long run.

“When Kyle and I were in charge of the national team, we were actually quite happy with how well we did in the Digicel Cup (in reaching the play-offs for the eight-team finals before losing to Haiti in Trinidad) particularly given our lack of preparation time and the fact that we had no practice matches.

“But we still did very well against the likes of Barbados and the Bahamas. When we moved up a level though to take on the Concacaf heavyweights such as Haiti, whose players are almost all professionals, we weren’t quite up to it.

“Now though we have a chance to raise our game and perhaps, in the future, be able to compete with the bigger sides in the region.

“As usual though we would have like to have done more work with them, but because of the domestic fixture list we’re going into these two games with only around three weeks proper training under our belts.

“We’re pretty happy that the first four games are at home, and hopefully the excitement and the adrenaline will be enough to get the boys through the two games we’ve got coming up.

“After the third game on May 9 we have a four-week break between matches which we will treat as another pre-season if you like to get the players’ fitness up to peak levels.

“But considering the limited time we’ve had, the squad have worked very hard and in my opinion are looking pretty sharp both physically and mentally.

“There’s an awful lot of excitement among the players as well as we start our campaign in this league. We’re hopeful there’ll be a good turn-out. Thankfully because we’ve got some very generous sponsors on board we are not relying on the gate for our existence, but it would obviously help the players perform if they had a big crowd behind them and there was a decent atmosphere.

“We’re certainly hoping that the people get behind us.”