As international coaches are so fond of telling the media these days, `there are no easy matches'.

Yet not too much could or should be read into Bermuda's 5-1 demolition of British Virgin Islands in the away leg of the first round World Cup qualifier last Sunday.

Reduced to 10 men after little more than 10 minutes, Bermuda produced a thoroughly professional performance to come away with a result which virtually turns next Sunday's return leg at National Stadium into a walk in the park.

But by all accounts, BVI would struggle against most of our Premier Division sides and on a National Stadium pitch conducive to good football -- as opposed to the bare and bumpy track in Tortola -- with or without our four professional players, Bermuda should breeze into the next round.

But it's only then that coach Clyde Best will be able to determine how far this team can go and whether the squad he has put together can at least match that of '92 coach Gary Darrell who enjoyed a relatively successful run in the same competition.

Second round opponents Antigua, although hardly regarded as footballing powers even in the Caribbean region, will provide a much sterner test. In two matches against Bermuda last year, the teams each came away with 1-0 victories, with Antigua reportedly missing five of their better players.

Bermuda were also missing star strikers Kyle Lightbourne and Shaun Goater who must be seen as the key to the Island's continuing success.

However, Antigua away shouldn't be regarded lightly. And one point Best is sure to be stressing in the lead-up to that tie is self-discipline -- the lack of which saw Kentoine Jennings ejected for foul and abusive language so early in last Sunday's match.

Fortunately his dismissal ultimately mattered little. But against better opposition -- and be assured Bermuda won't meet another team in this cup campaign so devoid of ideas as the BVI -- that sending off would have spelt disaster, and Jennings could have found himself vilified in the same manner as England's David Beckham a la World Cup '98 against Argentina.

A one match suspension will rule Jennings out of the BVI return leg but he should be back for the Antigua tie, and along with his team-mates be acutely aware of the responsibilities each and every player shoulders when he pulls on a national team shirt. Another sending off so early would almost certainly shatter Bermuda's World Cup dreams there and then.

Even with 11 men for the entire 90 minutes, as Goater indicated last Sunday, Bermuda still need to brush up on some of their basic skills.

The longer the squad stay together, the more they can be expected to gel. And for that reason, it's important in the absence of Goater and Lightbourne, Harrisburg Heat pair David Bascome and Meshach Wade at least make themselves available for the second BVI match.

The result should be a foregone conclusion, but the point of the exercise should be to improve on teamwork for the mountain that lies ahead.

*** THANKS to ZBM, Bermudians were able to hear live radio coverage of last Sunday's match -- and for that the Prospect station have to be commended.

But it was disappointing that, having sent Mike Sharpe to report on the event, they couldn't come up with anything better in their pre-match coverage.

The best they could muster on last Friday's newscast was a totally confusing and misleading story attempting to discredit The Royal Gazette's own Jonathan Kent who that day had broken the news of the BVI's soccer technical director resigning.

Sharpe insisted that the BVI national coach had not quit. Had he taken time to read the Gazette story he would have seen there had been no mention of `national coach' only technical director. In the same way as Bermuda Football Association employ Clyde Best as technical director and Robert Calderon as national coach, the BVI have separate posts, although a technical director is also regarded as a coach.

But sadly that kind of reporting is all too common from our broadcast friends these days in both sports and general news. Unable or unwilling to generate their own stories, they resort to wild pot shots at the competition, often without doing their homework.

Come on guys, despite getting scooped by the daily most days of the year, it would be nice if in as high a profile event as the World Cup you could leave your viewers a little more informed -- preferably with an accurate version of events.

-- ADRIAN ROBSON