For Gary (Tuba) Mallory, Sunday's Friendship Trophy final at Wellington Oval presented the Somerset Eagles coach with an ideal opportunity to walk away from the game he so loves in a blaze of glory.

Those dreams, however, quickly turned into a nightmare amid horrific scenes of violence after an ongoing feud between rival factions spilled onto the pitch, forcing the match between Eagles and North Village to be abandoned after 19 minutes.

When the dust settled, three men were left with multiple cuts after one of the most brazen attacks at a football ground in recent memory.

Ten men have since been arrested in connection with the attack ? witnessed by several hundred - with more arrests expected to be made in the near future.

Mallory, a former Boulevard and North Village player, now intends to throw in the towel at season's end ? a hard decision made easier by the events which transpired at Wellington Oval that have shed new light on a darker side of Bermuda.

"This game has been good to me and I still love the game. But I have to think twice about it because my son died trying to stop a fight," he said, referring to his son, Tekle, who was stabbed to death outside the Ice Queen restaurant in Paget three years ago.

"I am retiring and getting away from it all because I can only do what I can. I have been a part of this sport for many years but scenes like that make me wonder is it really worth it. Football has been very good to me but it is now time to go away. I have done all what I could do and it's been good. But those ugly scenes are not going to tarnish all the good times I had in the game."

The Eagles coach is set to retire after his team's final Premier Division league match against Dandy Town at BAA Field tomorrow night ? a venue where Mallory himself was set upon several years ago.

"When my incident occurred four years ago not much was said and everybody just thought it was a little incident," he said. "Four guys attacked me from behind and what happened to them? They (Bermuda Football Association) told me they were going to have an inquiry about the incident. A lot incidents have happened since then and we are still just talking. Obviously we haven't learned anything.

Regardless of Police presence, they (thugs) don't care."

Violence previously flared at three other matches this season. Trouble erupted following two football matches at Southampton Oval where Devonshire Cougars player Shaki Minors was set upon by thugs as he left the ground. Two weeks later a Social Club player suffered minor head injuries after being attacked by a group of men following the match between Social Club and PHC Zebras at the same venue, while earlier this year a Somerset Trojans player was attacked by a knife-wielding attacker as he attempted to leave Malabar grounds.

All of these incidents followed on the heels of another last year ? caught on camera at Devonshire Recreation Club ? in which an object believed to have been a sword was produced during a melee which erupted on the club's eastern embankment.

"I really don't know where the blame lies," added Mallory. "We can say this or that but at the end of the day we have to collectively come together and nip it in the bud. Yesterday was a scary feeling . . . and my greatest concern was the children I saw screaming and crying. It's very unfortunate they had to be exposed to something like this at a very young age."

According to Mallory, the issue of violence in the community has been repeatedly "swept" under the rug.

"These things have been happening for a long time but we have been turning a blind eye to the situation. Four years ago I was involved in an incident and there was no security at that game and here we are still going through the same thing," he said.

"We have to stop passing the buck and the BFA saying this and that and not doing anything about the situation. I was an official (Somerset Trojans assistant coach) who got attacked and the guys were never brought to justice because it was Tuba! Had it been a high profile individual something would have been done."

And football, said Mallory, was the biggest loser.

"Football is losing out and we have all brought it upon ourselves," he added. "Everything has been put in our faces but we have been ignoring the signs. People in positions have got to stop passing the buck and make the right decisions or people are going to move on to other sports . . . and you can't blame them.

"You decide to take your family out to a Sunday afternoon of football and then you are subjected to this sort of behaviour. Why should innocent people be subjected to this? Somebody could have died."