Our final home game of the season was on Tuesday night at the National Sports Centre, and all of those who watched our 2-2 draw with the Western Mass Pioneers must surely agree that we've certainly come a long way since April.

What pleased me most about the performance was our mental strength. We've had a problem all year conceding early goals, and when we went 2-0 down in the first half yet again, the Hogges team of the early part of the season would have rolled over and died.

Not this time though. Instead they came out after the break and thoroughly dominated the opposition. They were first to the ball, they were clever and penetrative. Watching from the sidelines, I was incredibly proud of the way they responded in the face of adversity. In my experience, even playing for the national team all those years ago, if we went two-down it was almost as if the game was over.

But the current Hogges squad are much more confident and sure of themselves in light of the last few positive performances and we told them at half-time that they could get themselves back into the match if they really believed they could.

Thankfully it worked out, and to be honest we could well have won it once again given the number of chances we carved out.

We now have five road games left throughout August. We're still bottom of the table by one point from the New Hampshire Phantoms, but given the games we have in hand over our nearest rivals and the way we're playing at the moment, we've got to believe that we can get ourselves off the bottom. If we can do that we will have had a terrific first season.

The point of all this, of course, is development. If I can sit in the stands at a national team game in three of fours years' time and watch us compete against and even beat a side who we've traditionally struggled against for the last few years or so (say a Haiti or an El Salvador) then I'll know we're on the right track and the Hogges effect is working. So often in the recent past the national team have been inactive, only to turn up at major tournaments and not do their talent justice.

I'll be very interested to see the make-up of our next national squad and to be honest I'd be very surprised if the vast majority of the players selected were not also Hogges. The experience of playing in the USL can only make them better. We've seen it with our very own eyes inside the four months of our life as a professional football outfit. Just imagine where we could be three or four seasons down the road.

I'd like if I could to now turn to the contents of Sport Editor's Adrian Robson's Friday Forum yesterday, which quite correctly questioned why it is that the majority of the people that turn up to watch the Hogges play are white, while Bermuda's black football fans in the ground are few and far between.

It's a point which needed to be raised and I'd like to thank Adrian for doing so. It's something that I'm aware of and felt was really obvious on Tuesday night when I looked up at the main stand.

It is a bit bizarre that the people who turn out in their hundreds (and sometimes thousands) to watch Devonshire Cougars or North Village on a Friday night or Sunday afternoon during the regular season don't seem to come and support the Hogges. Just because of Bermuda's demographics and the popularity of football on the Island, it's a undeniable fact that the overwhelming majority of local football fans are black, so to be confronted with a crowd which is say 60 or 70 percent white at Hogges games is definitely strange.

Once the season is over, Paul Scope, Kyle (Lightbourne) and myself will sit down for a complete post-mortem and one of the main topics which will be discussed is how we can do better at reaching out to black football supporters. Perhaps our marketing has to be more aggressive. Maybe we'll have to look at ticket prices. Or perhaps it's that many Bermudians are only interested in winners and would start to come out to watch after we've strung a couple of wins together on home soil. I'd certainly be interested to hear from any readers of this column who have any suggestions.

Whatever happens, and while we're actually quite happy with the crowds we have been getting in the latter part of the season, there's definitely room for significant improvement.

Finally, with our last home game out of the way I'd like to thank all of our sponsors and volunteers who helped to make this first year of the Hogges a success. We were always going to have our ups and downs, but we're very happy with the way it has gone and it just wouldn't have been possible without all the fantastic support we've had.