Nine days have passed since the Bermuda Hogges' second 1-0 defeat to the Harrisburg City Islanders, and since then we've had a lot of time to reflect on the two matches and the areas we need to improve on.

We sat down as a group and watched the DVDs of the two games and had a very frank and open discussion about what we did right and what we did wrong.

What became obvious to all of us was that we didn't respond anywhere near well enough to Harrisburg's very physical style of play — we were bullied and roughed up in both matches, particularly in midfield where we came off second best in 50-50 challenges far too often and consequently did not see a lot of the ball.

They didn't show us any respect whatsoever, they got stuck in and gave us no time or space to play the football we're capable of.

Harrisburg didn't have any real playmakers, but they were fit, strong and well-organised and because many of our players are not used to coming up against that sort of team on a regular basis, to a certain extent we struggled to adapt.

We knew this might be the case to begin with, and what I've stressed to the players over and over again is that the stuff they used to get away with in Premier Division football is just not going to cut it at the USL level.

I believe they've accepted that fact, and have been working very hard during our daily sessions to try and make amends in our game against the Cincinnati Kings tonight.

I believe we have the resources in the squad to do well in this league. But with many of the other teams likely to play a similar style to Harrisburg, winning the midfield battle is going to be crucial for our fortunes this season.

If we don't, and we continue to miss out in terms of winning tackles and headers in the centre of the park, then we're going to find ourselves very firmly on the defensive for much of the summer.

Consequently, we've spent a lot of time in the last week practising keeping the ball a bit better as well as continuing pretty relentlessly with the physical work in light of the very short pre-season we had.

Having seen how strong Harrisburg's players were on the ball and how easily at times they brushed aside our challenges, the players now know why we put such an emphasis on weights from the very beginning of the programme.

Strength training is such an important part of the preparation in modern-day professional football and as time goes by, the fans who come to watch us regularly will start to see some real improvements in this area.

Apart from Kwame Steede, who is in the final stages of recovering from knee surgery, we've got pretty much a fully fit squad to pick from.

Seion Darrell and Raymond Beach were back in training with the squad on Monday, having returned from Regiment duty, but given the lack of preparation time we've decided not to consider them for tonight's game at the National Sports Centre.

Against Harrisburg we were around seven players down for a variety of reasons, so slowly but surely we're getting towards the stage where we'll be able to pick from the full squad.

We're desperate to get off the mark with a win. We've got a break of over three weeks after this game and it won't be a good feeling to go into a extended lay-off like that having lost the last game.

I'm confident the players have it in them to raise their level tonight. And I'm hopeful too that as many of you as possible will turn out to help them achieve this.