WITH Hurricane Gustav now bearing down on the Cayman Islands, Bermuda's national football team were blown over by a surprise early hurricane on Wednesday night ¿ namely Antigua who crushed Bermuda 4-0 in the opening match of the Digicel Caribbean Cup at the Truman Bodden Sports Complex in Cayman.

And yesterday Bermuda's coaches and officials along with the players were all in shock at how hopeless Wednesday night's performance was in light of the fact that all the teams in this opening round of the Caribbean Cup thought Bermuda were the team to beat. In fact so bad were Bermuda that former national coach Gary Darrell told BFA technical director Derek Broadley that "you could have made 10 changes at half time".

Bermuda were to face St. Martin tonight while Cayman were to take on Antigua but those games have been postponed until Saturday and Sunday because of Gustav.

St. Martin were beaten by hosts Cayman 3-0 in Wednesday night's other match in the four-team qualifying group.

For Broadley, who took over as technical director earlier this year, Wednesday's result was the first major downfall he has witnessed since arriving in Bermuda. And he wants not only to see how the players react to Wednesday's loss but also how national coach Kenny Thompson responds.

He said: "For me I am looking at the result and wondering whether what we had done before was very lucky. Now the real work begins. Everything I have seen up until now has been fairly positive. Now over the next two games (against St. Martin and Cayman) I will get a real understanding of Bermuda football. It is easy when you are winning, isn't it? Since I have been involved everything has been going along nicely.

"When we were beating Trinidad (in World Cup qualifying earlier this summer) I wasn't shouting from the rooftops and I am not going to totally panic now just because of one bad performance. Everything seems to go along nicely and then as we say in England you get a thunderbolt ¿ and last night was a thunderbolt.

"I am interested to see how Kenny responds since this is ultimately his team. I will find out a lot about Kenny to see how he responds to this. I have seen how he responds to a good win and now let's see how he responds to a defeat."

Broadley added: "I was totally disappointed by the result . . . and the performance. It was one of those situations where almost everyone ¿ every player ¿ did not perform. So now you are scratching your head asking what happened.

"If it was five or six of them who had played in Miami (last weekend in a 1-0 victory over USL Division One Miami FC) you could say that had a draining effect on them. If it was just the guys who didn't come to Miami you could say it was down to them. But it was everybody ¿ no one played well. All the goals were errors and were certainly preventable. They (Antigua) didn't do anything to win the game. It wasn't like you could say that they had a great striker or their defence was solid. It was an allround bad performance by us."

Broadley was watching in the company of former national coach Gary Darrell and said: "Gary told me at half time you could have made 10 substitutions. It could be just a bad day at the office and hopefully we can bounce back (in the next two games against St. Martin and Cayman) and qualify for the next round.

"Maybe we can put this down to a bad experience. The danger is if we don't perform against St. Martin and Cayman then there are serious repercussions and things we have to look at."

Broadley said the coaches, staff and players were set to meet later yesterday to try and figure out what went wrong in the woeful performance against Antigua.

"If you are just looking for faults, well there were so many things that went wrong and you are wondering can it go that bad a second time. We will sit everyone down and go through the roles and responsibilities. We are missing a few players but that shouldn't dip the performance as much as it did last night.

"Against Miami we played quite well and that is the strange thing about it."

With regards to Hurricane Gustav, the BFA said yesterday: "Gustav is scheduled to be a category two hurricane by Friday (today), as it makes its way to the Cayman Islands. Cayman is known for its low lying areas therefore there will be major problems for anyone on the island at this present time.

"To date, the country has been advised to make all preparations for the hurricane, this coming from their government. In the meantime, Anthony Francis, head of delegation for the Bermuda team has been advised to purchase as much bottled water as possible, at least two to three days' supply and dry foods."

The BFA spokesman added that the Cayman government will be shutting down the electricity and water supply some time today. "This is a normal procedure for the Caymans when they have to deal with hurricanes of this magnitude," he added.

Bermuda have 17 players and six staff members staying at the Comfort Inn in Cayman. They are now bracing for Gustav which is to touch down sometime on Friday. "(New England Revolution) Khano Smith was scheduled to depart Cayman yesterday for Boston and Keishen Bean was due to fly in. However American Airlines has suspended all flights coming and going to the Cayman Islands at this present time.

"All games have been suspended until Saturday and Sunday, and that's only if they have the clearance to play," added the spokesman.