After losing our opening two games to the Harrisburg City Islanders and playing well below the standard I know we’re capable of, we at the Bermuda Hogges went into the match against the Cincinnati Kings under a significant amount of pressure to raise our game.

And while a 1-1 draw doesn’t look like anything particularly special on paper, from a coaching perspective I was truly delighted with our much-improved performance. I would go so far as to say we were actually the better side on the night, carving out more opportunities and generally looking like the team more likely to score in the second half.

What pleased the management more than anything about our draw was that having been bashed about all over the park by Harrisburg, against Cincinnati we competed far better physically, particularly when it came to the battle for the midfield.

This was no mean feat either. Most of Cincinnati’s players were six-foot plus and weren’t afraid of a tackle.

We can count the number of six-foot players on our books on the fingers of one hand, but to our great credit, we competed well in every position and were far better at winning the 50-50 challenges in the centre as well as the frequent headers that had to be contested. As I’ve said before, we knew from the outset that we were entering in a very physical league and that we were going to have to toughen up and get stronger in order to compete.

I would like to make special mention of Sammy DeGraff’s performance which I thought was excellent on the night in central midfield. Sammy won tackles and linked play very well between defence and attack.

He didn’t play in the two games against Harrisburg, but he had a chance to view the tapes and learn from his mistakes we made. And he responded magnificently against Cincinnati and there were several other guys on the pitch who seemed willing and able to follow his lead.

The fact that we started to pass the ball a bit better and create the space and the time to have numerous shots on goal was also very pleasing and as time goes on and we become more and more comfortable with this standard of football, I’ll back this side to score regularly.

The next step in terms of our progression I think is to learn to be a little more patient. On quite a few occasions against Cincinnati I thought we were a little bit too quick to go for goal instead of moving the ball around, taking a few more passes and drawing the opposition out of position.

That’s the real difference between professional and amateur football in my opinion. Amateurs tend to put together one, two or three passes before getting off a shot or a cross. But sometimes, particularly when you’re playing against a side that is well-organised defensively, you need to take a little more time, string say ten passes or more together if possible to draw defenders out of position before you look to head towards goal.

It’s something we’ve talked about and hopefully something that with a little more time and a few more games the players will begin to understand and implement.

We’ve now got just under three weeks off until our fourth match against the Charlotte Eagles at home, during which time we’ll continue to do a lot of physical work and fit in a couple of practice games just to get in a full 90 minutes of football. The games come thick and fast after that so it’s crucial that we’re as fit and prepared as we can be.

Cincinnati’s angerAnybody who was at the game or read the press coverage will have noticed that things became a little heated towards the end of the game on the Cincinnati bench, with the coach John Pickup and their owner Yacoub Abdallahi Sidya making a lot of noise about the quality of the officiating.

I’ve been around the professional game for quite some time so have seen all this sort of thing before. Quite frankly I’m just not sure what they were making a fuss about, but one thing is for sure: they wouldn’t have been complaining if they had been winning.

The fact is we came out after half-time and outplayed them and you could tell that the frustration level was growing on their bench.

I know there was some confusion as to whether Sidya should have been sent off. But from where I was sitting it was the coach who should have been given his marching orders because he was being particularly aggressive and foul-mouthed towards the fourth official Anthony Mouchette.

Either way, while I don’t condone that sort of behaviour, the world of professional football is a tough, cut-throat place where managers and players can often find themselves under a huge amount of pressure to deliver results. I’ve seen that sort of behaviour from managers all through my career and by now I’m pretty immune to it. It’s just a reality of professional football where people’s livelihoods are at stake that these sorts of things are going to happen from time to time.

Crockwell not banned On a different subject, there seems to have been some confusion as to why Shaki Crockwell was allowed to play last Wednesday night despite being handed a four-game ban by the BFA for a head-butt in the FA Cup final.

To be clear, what I meant when I wrote in this column a few weeks back that we had come to an agreement with the BFA over disciplinary matters was that if a player was banned for an extended length of time — say a year or more — for a very serious infraction, then we would be willing to agree not to field the player.

What we have not agreed to is a situation where if a player gets banned for a few games right at the end of the season — as was the situation in Shaki’s case — that will extend this to include Hogges games as well.

That would be unfair as we are a totally separate league and it makes no sense for a player banned for a short period of time in a BFA-sanctioned competition to serve out that sentence when representing a team in the United Soccer League.

We made an in-house decision as a result of Shaki’s violent conduct to ban him from two Hogges games — which he has done — and he will serve out his BFA-imposed ban when he resumes playing for Boulevard next season.

Pierce sackingMoving away from the Hogges, news this week that my old club Manchester City had sacked Stuart Pierce after a couple of seasons in the job didn’t entirely surprise me.

From the moment he took over I got the impression that the club’s directors were biding their time, waiting to see if he did surprisingly well, but if not get rid of him and bring in somebody with more managerial experience at the top level.

In fairness to Pierce, he did OK initially, but in his first full season the results were disappointing and a 14th-place finish — only four points above the relegation zone — would not have pleased the chairman or the fans.

Managers are well aware their life-expectancy in any one job is short and they must deliver instant results. And given Pierce’s lack of managerial experience, he was always likely to be an easy target.

I really liked the idea of Sam Allardyce taking over at City after the wonders he worked at Bolton. His attention to detail in preparation was legendary and you just don’t keep a small club like Bolton where they have been for the last few years without knowing what you’re doing.

But now he’s off to Newcastle that option has gone, and looking around I think City would be well advised to look overseas because I’m not sure there is currently the right calibre of British manager on offer.

It’s a shame for Pierce because his heart was in the right place, but when push came to shove he just wasn’t delivering the goods.