A RADIO chat-show caller this week appeared to complain that during the football season, sports pages in this newspaper were filled with nothing but soccer . . . everything else was ignored.

One wonders whether he had been reading something else.

Anybody picking up the paper since the football season began a few months ago might have noticed that the focus has been mainly on sailing (Gold Cup), golf (Grand Slam, Bermuda Open, this week's Gosling's, Michael Sims), rugby (the World Rugby Classic) and our other national sport, cricket (Americas Championship).

Compared to previous years, football has barely got a mention.

And there's good reason for that – there's been precious little on which to report.

For reasons better known to Bermuda Football Association and seemingly nobody else, the schedule has ensured that Premier Division clubs have remained idle for three of the last four weekends. In fact, they've played just twice in the last six weekends.

Just when the Premier title chase began to get interesting, the season came to a grinding halt.

Isn't November traditionally one of the busiest times of the campaign with perfect weather ensuring decent playing surfaces and healthy crowds? As we all know when it rains and blows, Bermudians – both players and fans – prefer to remain on the couch, TV flicker in hand.

Now, when the weather worsens in February and March, postponements will cause the inevitable backlog, causing players to turn out perhaps two or three times a week.

What we have seen in past weeks is a luke-warm FA Cup tournament played under a new format which ensures that Premier teams are left out of the opening two rounds and automatically pushed through to the third stage.

As our columnist Clay Smith noted a couple of weeks ago, the competition has lost much of its appeal. In previous years, top teams could be booted out by the so-called minnows right from the beginning. And such is the ever-decreasing gap between Commercial, First Division and Premier clubs, it's not been uncommon.

Now the term 'giant-killer' has been rendered almost obsolete.

Why the change in format? Who knows?

Since Richard Calderon replaced Larry Mussenden as president of the BFA more than a month ago, the media and as such the public have been kept in the dark.

Apart from the frequent changes in schedule, we haven't heard a peep from the new chief of the organisation he represents.

Mussenden's 'football family' – the oft-used phrase by which he attempted to embrace administrators, players, coaches and fans – seems to have disintegrated.

Of course, it's still too early to pass judgment on Calderon. We're aware he's eager to make significant changes in the way the sport is run. And it might be that he wants to get all his ducks in a row before addressing the public.

But he has to be aware the BFA is financed by the public purse – to the tune of several million dollars.

And the public has a right to know how he intends to spend those dollars.

The honeymoon's over.

No games of significance, no information on policy!

It's Bermuda's national sport for goodness sake, smack in the middle of the season. This isn't the time to go into hiding.

Look across the pond. Football in almost every European country is making headlines day after day.

Calderon has been a vociferous critic of past administrations. Now he has the power to implement his own ideas as to how the game should be run.

Isn't it time we heard them!

* * * *

WHILE one radio call-in listener this week got it wrong, another got it absolutely right.

Neither this paper nor other members of the media afforded young golfer Daniel Augustus the credit he deserved after shooting an astonishing six-under-par 64 in the Gosling's tournament at Belmont Hills on Tuesday.

That round might have been the best seen at Belmont since the course was redesigned, not only by an amateur but also by a professional.

It was enough to temporarily catapult the teenager into second place above a host of local and visiting pros.

As we watch Michael Sims' ride in the final stage of PGA Qualifying School this weekend, we can be assured that if he fails to regain his Tour card, there's a Bermudian several years younger who has the potential to make an even bigger impact on the sport.

- ADRIAN ROBSON