Bermuda Football Association president Larry Mussenden has begged Government to increase the governing body's funding in a speech to Hamilton Rotary Club.

The BFA boss said the continued loss of funds was the biggest threat the BFA faced in the immediate future, and warned of the consequences for the sport on the Island if its $3million a year budget wasn't restored.

Prior to the global recession the Association was promised $15 million by Government to be paid out over the course of a five-year period from 2007 to 2012. The economic reality of the past couple years, however, has seen the BFA receive just $2.5 million of the $6 million it should have been given.

As well as basing an entire infrastructure on the money promised, the BFA also more than doubled their permanent staff from three in 2004 to seven in 2010.

"I don't think there are too many threats to football in Bermuda," said Mussenden. "But I will say this, we have built an institution and an infrastructure based on the funding of the $3 million a year. That was a commitment for a number of years, and unfortunately the last two years it has been cut from $3 million to $1.5 million two years' ago, and this current year the $3 million got cut to $1 million.

"We have built up the infrastructure and then we have seen the funding disappear, which actually, while we can staff the office and cover the administrative expenses, we still need to have the funding for the programmes.

"And so that is our biggest threat right now, that in the upcoming year that our funding will be cut and we are hoping it won't be cut. I would ask that you tell any member of Parliament that you see or Minister, or Finance Minister, that the BFA is one organisation where the funding should not be cut or reduced, but should in fact be restored back to the original commitment of $3 million."

While sports across Bermuda have seen their funding slashed in the past two years, Mussenden argued that football gave more value for money than others, saying it contributed to three million activity man hours in the nine months of the year it was played.

"It costs us a $1 an hour to fund all our programmes, there aren't many sports that can say that," said Mussenden. "If a person did not have that time to do, what would they be doing? Please, please, please don't cut our budget, and give us our grant back to $3 million.

"We want to continue our development, we want to increase the quantity of players and coaches in Bermuda, we also want to increase the quality. That's what we are going to do over the next few years, this is the vision that we have."

In his speech at Royal Hamilton Amateur Dinghy Club yesterday, Mussenden also offered up the Association as mediators in the growing unrest between rival gangs on the Island, and said he would happily work behind the scenes to bring that to an end.

"I think we can get them to talk and that whatever the issues are we can get them resolved," said Mussenden. "I'm tasking football with doing that."

"We know that there is violence in the community, we know that young people are shooting each other, and we think the BFA can play a role in bringing some of that to an end.

"We think the youngsters want to be heard, we think they want to have someone in a position of responsibility sit down and listen to what they have to say. We know they play football against each other, we know who they are, we know that this community has had hurt because of the violence.

"That's hurt that we perhaps cannot fix, but is certainly a kind of hurt, and a kind of violence that we can stop. Football has a role, football around the world has brought violence and wars to an end, it can do it in Bermuda.

"I'm appealing to anyone that's in a group, anyone that's in a gang out there, anybody that feels threatened by violence, you can come and talk to us. We're going to work on some programmes to come and talk to you."