in local soccer, insists Aldwyn Savery, first vice president of Bermuda Football Association.

Savery was speaking two days after executives of the BFA and the Bermuda Referees' Association met for the first time to discuss recent violence against officials.

"Soccer in the Island is not in such a bad state at all,'' said Savery. "If you look at what is happening in the sport, and many other sports worldwide, you will note that we are no different.

"For the last three or so years we have been doing very well as far as keeping violence to a minimum. It's just unfortunate that these two back-to-back outbreaks have come in focus.'' Savery admitted incidents of poor crowd control and referees being assaulted took away any progress that was being made in the sport and the timing of such negativity was unfortunate.

Describing Wednesday's meeting as "very cordial'', he said both the BFA and BRA would be working feverishly to come up with solutions so that soccer could continue to flourish.

"We have planned a further meeting with the whole BFA and BRA executives to discuss the issues more extensively and hopefully come up with sensible ways of working towards sorting these matters out,'' said Savery.

The vice-president could not pinpoint a date when the meeting would take place, but estimated that it would probably be during the first part of next week when most of the BFA executive would be on the Island.

President Neville Tyrrell and general secretary David Sabir arrived back this week from the Caribbean, where they were wrapping up plans for Bermuda's return to Caribbean soccer competition.

"Personally I feel that meeting with the BRA like this is something that should be looked at as an ongoing thing. We shouldn't wait until something happens,'' added Savery.

"It's not a situation where the referees are on their own. The way things can work well is if all involved in soccer can look at situations of this nature collectively and come up with good suggestions and answers to resolve things.'' One item on the agenda when the BFA and BRA do meet will be the referees' insistence on having insurance covering their members by January 1, 1997.

This week BRA president Stuart Crockwell said that they would be forced to take further action -- including possible boycotts -- unless the BFA took steps to provide coverage against violence.