The Bermuda Football Association (BFA) were keeping their cards close to the chest after Tuesday night's special meeting at Young Men's Social Club.

Association president Neville Tyrrell, who has come in for much criticism among the Island's talk-show circuit, refused to divulge details of the executive's World Cup `post-mortem' delivered to the registered affiliates.

"I have no comment to make at this time regarding the matters of last night's meeting,'' said Tyrrell, who has been president since 1996.

"There are some issues that have to be taken care of first with regard to the affiliates as well as executive and pending that we will be releasing a statement next week.'' Several issues have recently been raised regarding the administration of the World Cup campaign, including perceived poor administration and support for players by the hierarchy, the decision to not renew Clyde Best's contract as technical director and the failure to secure the services of Bermudian professionals Shaun Goater and Kyle Lightbourne for the Antigua tie.

It has been said that Tyrrell made a statement targeting such criticisms, which seemed to satisfy those in attendance...at least for the moment.

There were no apparent calls for Tyrrell to resign in the wake of Bermuda's exit from the tournament and the consequent resignation of national coach Robert Calderon and departure of Best.

"I thought it was a very good meeting involving the affiliates, with a lot of healthy and sensible discussion,'' said Jon Beard, chairman of the coaching committee. Meanwhile, Chris Furbert, president of PHC intimated that he and his club were content to allow the local governing body time to deal with relevant issues before adopting a stance one way or the other.

And, never one to mince words, Furbert took the opportunity to decry the press for its perennial witch-hunt approach to dealing with the local organisations.

"I have no comment to make at this time,'' he said. "There are a few things that the BFA have to do and I want to allow them time to do what needs to be done before I talk to anybody.

"You guys (press) are interested in just getting all the negative stuff and the positive things are ignored.'' Pressed on the issue of whether a new technical director will be appointed, Beard said the situation was under examination.

"What we're doing -- and this is no secret -- is reviewing the whole (technical director) situation. That's not something we're going to jump straight back down into.

"It may be the decision that we do go back with the technical director, or it may be that we need to look in slightly different areas where we don't need somebody to do all of that and we need it broken down into different jobs that are more suitable to Bermuda's needs.'' Beard did not see Bermuda's World Cup exit as an abject failure, but something to digest and learn from.

He noted there to be some `positives' among all the perceived gloom and doom being vented by members of the public. "People say we failed and we didn't lose a game. We didn't lose a game and we were knocked out of the World Cup,'' said Beard. "I think the positives that came out were that we do have players capable of playing at a good level and the more exposure we can give them the better.

"I actually thought we dominated the game up at National Stadium and were the better team. Our players are capable of playing at a good level, we just need the financial wherewithal to make sure we can continue to do that and we need to make sure that we have good, solid coaching programmes in place all the way through.

"Football is one of those things... on the day we didn't win the game.

It's like when we played Haiti in the last World Cup where we won one-nil here and lost two-one down there and went through on away goals, it's football and sometimes these things happen.

"Although it's very disappointing to be knocked out and everyone at this point is pointing fingers I don't think that's it.

"I feel sorry for the players, the coaches and the public and BFA as a whole.

But what we can't do is sit there licking our wounds, we've got to set things up, work on improving our programme and we first have to look at improving our domestic product.'' Neville Tyrrell: no comment.