A 26-man Bermuda Hogges squad will be named next week, franchise owner Shaun Goater revealed yesterday.

The Manchester City legend, together with his co-owners Kyle Lightbourne and Paul Scope, are in the latter stages of registering squad members with the United Soccer League in America and once that process is complete, will then release the names and an official schedule for the five-month season.

“Everything has started to come together and what’s particularly pleasing is that all the players we identified as being potential Hogges players have expressed a strong interest in the project,” said Goater, who along with Lightbourne is expected to make numerous appearances as a substitute over the course of the summer.

“We’re pretty sure what our squad is, but until they’re registered with the league and everything is squared away, we are not allowed to release the names.

“With club football still going on, some of the players have obviously got to focus on those commitments. But we’ve been averaging 14 players at the optional early morning weight training sessions we’ve been having and once the squad is named we’ll be training every evening as well. These are exciting times.”

Meanwhile, national team coach Kenny Thompson has volunteered to be the Hogges’ fitness trainer — although it is understood he will have limited, if any, direct involvement with footballing matters.

Somerset Trojans coach Dennis Brown will also be involved as a defensive coach.

Burch earns Pan-

Am Games berthRoy-Allan Burch wrote his ticket for the Pan-Am Games in Rio de Janeiro this July with a superb swim yesterday in the 100 metres freestyle at the FINA World Swimming Championships in Melbourne.

Stuck in the first heat with a “No Time” seeding, Burch was off the blocks with a world-class reaction time of 0.64 seconds before powering through the first 50 metres in 24.62 seconds and finishing the race in a time of 52.40.

This surpassed the qualifying standard of 52.54 seconds and also set a new Bermuda record to boot — eclipsing the previous time established by Ronald Cowen in the Manchester Commonwealth Games by 9/100ths of a second.

His local club coach, Ben Smith, was delighted.

“That’s called taking advantage of an opportunity,” he said.

“Roy has worked very hard during the college season and I am very pleased that he could extend his competitive season into this championship.

“That was great swimming by Roy and I can hardly wait to see what he will put up in the 50”.

Burch swims the 50 metres freestyle — which is his speciality — tomorrow Down Under.Cup struggle

for tennis juniorsThe Island’s best young tennis players continued to struggle yesterday in El Salvador at the Junior Davis and Fed Cups.

Hard on the heels of their 3-0 defeats on Tuesday, the boys lost 3-0 to a rampant Barbados while the girls went down by a similar margin to hosts El Salvador.

In Davis Cup action, Bermuda’s number one seed Leonard Frederick Wade lost 6-2, 6-0 to Barbados’ Darian King, while at second string, Phillip Alexander Cooper was defeated by Seanon Williams 6-3, 6-2.

In the doubles, meanwhile, Wade and Cooper lost to Williams and Renaldo Gibson 6-1,6-3.

The girls fared little better in the Fed Cup, where number one seed Cayla Cross was beaten easily by Annette Rios 6-1, 6-0 while Carolita Joseph went down 6-0, 6-1. The young Bermudian duo then won two games in their doubles match against Alexia Casaus and Annette Rios.

Today the girls take on El Salvador while the boys come up against Puerto Rico.