Everyone involved with the Bermuda Hogges has learned plenty already this season and we had another lesson to content with against Cleveland City Stars last weekend.

It was the first time our players have had to play a professional match on artificial grass and it was certai>ly a bit of an eye opener for a few of theB>

I wouldn't say it had a major bearing on the result — a 2-0 defeat — but it did take us quite some time to get to grips with the surface and went behind after just two minutes.

That gave us a mountain to climb and I have to say we were guilty of some schoolboy defending — and you can't blame the surface for t.

It's a lot different from playing on grass, though, as the surface is a quicker with the ball tending to run away from you.

On grass the ball will always slow down at some point but on artificial grass it just gets quicker — you just can't catch it.

The bounce is also different and our players have been training on the surface this week ahead of our fixture against Cincinnati Kings who play on astro-turf.

Astro-turf is even harder than artificial grass so I don't think there will be too many players going to ground for slide tackles — that stuff burns.

A few of our players went shopping yesterday to invest in some astro-turf boots and we will have no excuses against the Kings who we play this weekend.

To be honest I'm not for astro-turf or artificial grass being used for professional matches. It's great to train on as it needs little maintenance and you can work on your fundamentals fine.t once you get to a profional level than my own personal view is games should be played on grass.

The staff and players had an ideal opportunity to watch Kings in action on Sunday night against Cleveland. It was good for the players to be able to watch a game in the US without any distraons.

They were ablo see at first hand the main difference betweenem and the rest of leag— discipline, physicality and onisation.

I haven't seen many teams in this league with a Plan B this campaign but unfortunately Plan A has unfortunately been good enough againus so far.

Mind, it should be fiery encounter against Kings as they had their president sent off in the 1-1 draw at the National Sports Centre earlier this season.

It should have been their coach though, who was giving the fourth official some verbal but the president was sent oby mistake.

We have been in the US for six days now, as part of a ten-day trip, and it's been great to get the players all together without any distractions. I've been pleased to see the players embroiled in plenty of football discussions between themselves. That's a good sign.

They have been getting up 10.30am everyday for training in hot conditions - it's about 90 degrees here at the moment and we have been delighted with their dedication. Hopefully we can get to grips with the astro-turf against Kings and pick up our first away pointf the season.