NOT without sacrifice...is how North Village president Shervin Dill sums up the team's first league title in 23 years.

How they climbed from the depths of the Premier Division at Christmas to win the league race with plenty to spare has been well documented, but the work going on behind the scenes was done with a long-time goals in mind.

Now there is no limit to what the Rams can achieve in the years to come as talented youngsters continue to roll off the conveyor belt. Certainly the structure is in place and in technical director Kenny Thompson and head coach Scott Morton they possess not only two of the sharpest minds in local football but a pair who are on the same page in terms of where they want to take the club.

Thompson played his early football at Somerset Eagles and Somerset Trojans and ironically will watch his new club take on the Eagles on Sunday at Police Field (2.30) for the right to meet Morton's former Dandy Town team in the FA Cup final.

Thompson stepped back from the coaching job at Village to oversee the whole programme while Morton ran the senior team. The club continued to shows its quality by winning more trophies in the last few years with two Dudley Eve titles, a FA Cup and now a league win this season. Now they are still in a position to go this season where only one team - Vasco four years ago - has gone since 1978-79 and that is to win the triple crown.

The three trophies that make up the triple crown are the league, which is already in the bag, FA and Friendship and the Rams are but three wins away from achieving that rare feat. Beating Eagles would put them into both end-of-season finals and set the club up for a thrilling finale.

"We have every hope of that and I pray that we will be successful in those two remaining competitions," said the club's president.

"We are in a very good position, we've qualified for the Friendship final and are the defending champions and have been in the FA (final) the last two years and we have a big game which we're not taking lightly against Somerset Eagles.

'I'm looking towards the final, it's one game at a time, but I'm praying for the success of the team and I think we're quite capable.We're putting in the necessary work and the FA is a funny cup, but an exciting cup. People rise above themselves and we will be prepared and I'm sure it's going to be a very entertaining match."

But Eagles won't be in a generous mood. Already they have beaten Premier Division sides Somerset Trojans and Wolves to reach the semi-finals for the first time and now they have their sights set on becoming the first non-Premier Division team since Wolves in 1996-97 to reach the FA final.

When Thompson joined Village as coach four years ago, the priority was not winning trophies but laying the groundwork for a programme which would guarantee sucess in the future.

"Four years ago we took a look at what we were trying to achieve as to where we were at and we knew we had to restructure," said Dill.

"We were pretty consistent in all of the competitions but we really were not reaching the levels that we felt we should have been at. We made a bold step in hiring a technical director and almost totally restructured and four years later we're reaping the benefits of it. Kenny Thompson has certainly brought with him a wealth of knowledge about the game and some very innovative and creative concepts about the game."

Morton gets a lot of the credit for the league win but Thompson's guidance behind the scenes has contributed in no small measure to the club's success at the senior level.

"Morton was Kenny's assistant before Kenny stepped down to direct more to the post of technical director, and rightly so, because he was finding he was too split in the time," said Dill.

"We saw it as a positive move as well and Morton stepped into what I would like to say was a very well structured programme. He certainly brings his own creativity and ideas and concepts but we had the structure in place and it was a matter of continuing with the concept and ideals that we had already begun to instill into the players."

Village's programme is like no other found on the Island. Senior players are screened and interviewed before they can join the club, to assure they will fit in, and the club even took the bold step of charging the youth players $400 a season to be in the programme.

"We took some criticism in the first year," the president admits, while admitting that the annual cost of $50,000 to run the junior programme was proving too costly without some creative ways to generate funding.

"We found a way that the programme could be self sustained to a large degree. They (players) get uniforms, training gear, gear bags, football and you can see the uniformity. We couldn't continue to finance the youth programme because we didn't have the income coming in.

"We knew where we were going and we did not expect to see results in the first year. But it's worth the sacrifice and we can see it getting better for us.The players are representing us and themselves and bad behaviour will be noted."

So too, will bad grades at school which is also not tolerated.

"The measurement of success for me has certainly been the youth programme," the president feels.

"It's not so much about the championships but the general higher level of education and the higher level of development and the higher level of a professional attitude towards the game. It has put our youth in a position where they are pretty much dominating the rest of Bermuda.

"We've had championship youth teams for the past four years, since the concept was introduced. That's not to say we didn't have it before but it is much more structured and is just a joy to see."

Added Dill: "We couldn't start without discipline and we had to look at anti-social behaviour and the way we were doing things and we needed to make some improvements in a lot of different areas.

"At the youth level behaviour is monitored by our education committee and our coaching staff and we have a programme where one compliments the other. We find ourselves in a position lots of times where we have to have a child step back from soccer because he is not performing well in school. We will interact with the teacher, they have to bring forms in, and we have the entities complementing each other."

Rather than waiting for the Bermuda Football Association to take the initiative in improving the sport, Village accept that responsibility rests with the clubs, too. In fact, they tried to share their ideas with other clubs, knowing that it could only improve the game throughout the Island.

"The response was not very good, we attempted on two occasions," Dill said regretfully. He warns that in order for football to improve clubs have to change the way they think.

"The invitation is still open for those that would have an interest. We sent out and have invited affiliate clubs after we had a proven, successful first year.

"It was so successful that it almost overwhelmed us and in the second year we have a waiting list of people who would like to join up with the programme. We certainly took quite a bit of criticism in the first year because it was a bold step, particularly with the price structure.

"But when we explained to people what they were getting for their money and what we were trying to do people, for the most part, bought into it. We did lose some players but that was as a result of people not buying into it from the beginning."

The club now sees the need to improve their facilities at Bernard Park, namely by having a proper clubhouse built. They have been at that Government owned ground since 1991.

"There are some obstacles and we have to take a lot of the responsibility," said the president.

"We have been in existence since 1957 and opened the field at Bernard Park in September of 1991 and haven't made a whole lot of progress since that time. The time is now to have a mandate to provide a facility for the youth development programme that we have. It is our intent to provide a first class clubhouse facility there and we have every intention of providing first class lighting."

North Village remain a close-knit club with former players retaining ties to the club, giving back in various ways. On the day they wrapped up the league title they honoured players from the 1977-78 triple crown winning team, players such as Joe Trott, Ralph Bean, Colin Paynter, Thornton (Cracks) Robinson, Wendell Baxter, Bill Smith, Cornell Castle, Randy Bean, Richard and Robert Calderon, Cal, Garrett and Parks Dill, Mel Bean and Haile Melakot.

"We take pride in the amount of former players who are still having some imput into how this club is going to progress," Dill stated.

And they are proud, too, of the players who came onto the scene after that, the more notables being Andrew Bascome, David Bascome and Shaun Goater.

"North Village are very proud of them and endorse their success," said Dill of the trio.

"Our mission statement is to promote a positive community through the development of drug free sports and programmes, emphasising mental and physical development."

All of the club's four league championships before this season came in the 1970s when they were a powerhouse in local football. At one point they held five trophies, though all not from the same season, Dill recalls.

The club is also the only club never to have been relegated from the top division.

"We've been consistent over the years and with seven runners-up we've been up there," said the president proudly.

"One of the things we're proud of is we have never been relegated and I think that has a lot to do with the depth of our programme."