We’re two games into the inaugural Bermuda Hogges season and it would have been wonderful to be able to tell you all this week about how brilliantly we played.

But anybody who was present at the National Sports Centre to watch our pair of 1-0 defeats at the hands of the Harrisburg City Islanders on Friday and Sunday would agree with me that we have a lot of work still ahead of us.

Considering that we were a long way from the level I know we are capable of, losing 1-0 both times was not a total disaster, though I’ll be the first to admit that had they had their scoring boots on, Harrisburg might well have come away with two handsome victories.

As I’ve tried to make clear from the beginning of this adventure, it’s going to take a lot more than three weeks of training to erase the years of bad habits that some of the players have developed playing amateur football on the Island.

Of course I and everybody else involved with the Hogges want to win every game we play in, but we’re realistic enough to know that it’s going to take a while for the players to get used to what is a very physical league and also to believe they belong there.

We’re trying to build a decent fan base for the Hogges in Bermuda as well, and I’m well aware that this should become a lot easier to achieve if we win a few games!

I didn’t think we played that badly against Harrisburg, particularly in the second game where we carved out a few more opportunities than we did in the first.

It was disappointing that we didn’t manage to get on the scoresheet in 180 minutes to football, particularly given our home advantage.

What the players will have realised from playing Harrisburg though is that a lot is going to be asked of them physically. Whenever one of our players got the ball, an Islanders player was right on him, hand on his back pressurising him, letting him know he was there. There was no sitting back and nobody was allowed any time or space.

This sort of pressure inevitably makes players who aren’t used to it either rush their passes or make a poor first touch — it happened time and again over the course of the two games and it’s something Kyle (Lightbourne), Paul (Scope) and I are aware of and will try to sort out. But it will take time.

We took a bit of stick in the press and from other quarters for our defensive performances.

Some were saying that our back four were too flat and high up the pitch and as a result we were getting caught out by long balls over the top into the space between the defenders and the goalkeeper.

We’ve decided to go with this defensive strategy because in modern-day professional football it’s generally accepted that it can be an extremely effective way of pressurising the ball in central areas and making sure the space between your midfield and your strikers is not too big.

The deeper you sit defensively, the deeper your midfield tends to drift as well — and then all of a sudden you’re all on the edge of your own penalty box inviting the opposition to hammer at you with crosses and shots while your forwards are almost totally isolated.

Sure, we didn’t always get it right against Harrisburg and there were times when our back four should have done better in terms of reading the situation and tracking any runs from their forwards.

But as the players become more comfortable with it I’m very confident that it will work really well. I know this because it’s a system that I’ve seen employed frequently during my professional career.

You can get away with sitting deep in local football, but if we did that in the USL we would find ourselves in real trouble very quickly.

In terms of the crowd for our first home games, overall we were fairly happy — though if I’m being honest I was a little surprised that we got fewer on Sunday afternoon then we did on Friday night.

Saying that though, those that were there created a pretty good atmosphere which the team and the coaches really appreciated. I’m hoping that the public will stick with us even if results don’t go our way initially and we’ll certainly do our best to repay that faith through improved performances on the pitch.

The mood among the players is fairly optimistic. Harrisburg are favourites to finish in the top three this year so to come away losing both games 1-0 was not the end of the world.

They’ve also got a much better understanding of the style of play in this league, which is almost certain to be very direct and aggressive.

Our defenders know they’re going to be required to head clear a lot of long balls throughout the season and the way we prepare for that is by testing them over and over again in training with people like myself and Kyle — who know what we’re doing in those situations — putting them under pressure in the air.

With a bit of patience I’m confident it will come good.

On top of this our squad should be back to more or less full strength in time for our third game against the Cincinnati Kings on May 9 (next Wednesday). We had seven of the 23 unavailable against Harrisburg which is obviously not an ideal way to start the campaign.

We’re all looking forward particularly to having Kwame Steede back to full fitness as we believe he has a lot to offer us as our playmaker in the centre of midfield. His knee is coming along and provided he continues to build his strength and stamina, I think he will do well at the USL level once he’s back firing on all cylinders.

We’re all looking forward to the next game — and we look forward to seeing many of you there too!