Technicians spent hours on emergency repairs to floodlights yesterday -- to stop soccer fans blowing a fuse and to save Bermuda's Football Association from red faces.

Around 500 fans and youth players for Bermuda and the US were plunged into darkness on the opening night of the International Youth Tournament at BAA Field on Sunday.

The match had to be abandoned because a new set of floodlights failed.

But teams of engineers from Belco spent all day tackling the problems at BAA yesterday, replacing transformers and upgrading equipment to prevent another blackout. Sunday night's game, with the US leading 1-0, was only called off after supporters were kept waiting 45 minutes.

Embarrassed organisers announced the match would be replayed on Tuesday night with free admission.

And officials from the BFA were keeping their fingers crossed last night that the entire tournament would not be kicked into touch by a repeat of the technical hitches which plagued the opening night.

It also emerged that organisers were given an early warning of the trouble ahead earlier on Sunday evening, when the floodlights first started faltering.

A Belco crew first responded to an emergency call out at 6.17 p.m. -- during the opening ceremony -- when a problem developed with BAA's overhead equipment.

The club and the BFA had only just forked out around $6,000 on 16 new floodlights, installed last week. But the existing transformers were too small to handle the extra power surge. And the fault was not discovered until it was too late and the Bermuda/US match was already into the second half.

Disconsolate fans, who had already watched Barbados under-17s beat a youth team from Scottish club Glasgow Rangers, slowly began drifting away from the ground when the power was cut at 10 p.m. Two Belco engineers finally arrived at 10.45, by which time the ground was almost empty and the players had returned to the changing rooms.

BFA co-organiser Jon Beard, who postponed the game at 10.40, said last night: "We do apologise for what happened and we're desperately keeping our fingers crossed there will be no repeat.

"We'd had a great evening on Sunday but to be honest, the floodlight failure made us look a bit second class. Belco worked hard for us today but it was puzzling why it took them so long to get an engineer to us.

"We did all we could and I don't think you can blame BAA. Somebody must have just overlooked the fact that the transformers were unsuitable.

"But what's most disappointing is that Belco couldn't get to us quicker. We all thought they would be coming from their headquarters on Serpentine Road, which is right next door.'' A spokeswoman for Belco, one of the co-sponsors of the tournament, also apologised for the mishap. But she said Belco first received the call at 10.10 and the two crews responded "as quickly as they possibly could''.

"One came from Southampton and the other came from Smith's,'' she said. "It took us 35 minutes to respond and BAA was certainly a priority for us on that night, with so many people in attendance.'' She added: "The lights were fixed by 11.17 and we're sorry that this was an inconvenience to everybody concerned.'' The competition's final matches are scheduled for Friday but any more technical hiccups could mean the entire format would have to be revamped.