elected president of the Bermuda Football Association.

Tyrrell, who has been acting president since the resignation in March of Richard Thompson, officially takes over control of Island soccer after beating out his only challenger, Aldwyn Savery, by a vote of 16-2 at Young Men's Social Club.

The long-awaited annual general meeting saw all of the executives, in accordance with the recommendations of the Sharpe Commission, resign, enabling a clean slate of officers to be elected.

All was not lost for the Savery, though; the former director ran unopposed for the position of first vice-president after newcomer Eddie Lambe withdrew his nomination and gave his support to Savery.

Elroy Ratteray also ran unopposed as second vice-president, retaining the position he held with the previous administration, while the same applied for Kent Bascome who was re-elected treasurer.

The interesting occurrence saw the nominating committee of honourary vice presidents offering their full slate of recommendations of executives and club representatives. But this wasn't gracefully accepted with affiliates who preferred to add their own nominees in many instances in addition to those put forward by the committee.

The nominating committee had recommended Tyrrell for president, Lambe for first vice president, Ratteray for second and Bascome for treasurer.

Their choices of nine club representatives were Gregory Grimes, Troy Harvey, Gladwin Bean, Delroy O'Brien, Ivan Smith, Lloyd Smith, Stuart Crockwell, Cymone Sims and Colin Smith who withdrew prior to the meeting.

However the floor decided to add the names of former member Fred Lewis and Jon Beard to the list of eight and the fight for the one additional spot was won by Beard.

In strongly recommending the nomination of Tyrrell as president, Sir John Sharpe had said that Tyrrell's interim leadership as acting president had "helped to restore the image of the BFA.'' One executive member who announced he didn't intend to run for a position was coaching chairman Johnny Nusum, who is reported to be taking over PHC's junior programme.

The five Directors will be selected jointly by the executives and honorary vice presidents within 30 days.

One of the major discussions among affiliates was the presentation of the draft for the prosposed schedule for the season, which was a revision of one presented recently after it was criticised.

The original draft called for the domestic season to start a month earlier on September 1, but the BFA were recently told to give it second thought after affiliates felt it would cause far too many complications.

Last night's new draft called for a start two weeks earlier than usual on September 13, but after much discussion and criticism it was amended to start the season on Saturday, September 14 with the Charity Cup at BAA.

Some of the major field operators took strong exception to the move, however, and felt that they had not been approached to offer their opinion to such a move which they obviously did not support. But a vote saw the presentation accepted with Tyrrell indicating that the early start to the season would prevent many scheduling headaches that the BFA had experienced in the past.

It was also confirmed that Hotels and Port Royal had been readmitted to the Second Division, meaning ten teams in that section.

Neville Tyrrell