A fight between young soccer players currently taking part in the Under 17 World Cup Qualifying Tournament broke out at Stonington Beach Hotel yesterday morning.

A few players from the losing Netherland Antilles team scrapped with players from opposing team Jamaica which had won an emotional 2-0 victory over the Antilles team Monday night.

Tournament organiser Dr. Gerard Bean said, however, that the incident was "not serious'' and that the young players had already put it behind them.

"It's history,'' he said. "There are much bigger challenges on the field.'' The fight was reported to have been started by the Netherland Antilles team and then the Jamaican team retaliated.

There were also reports of ashtrays and rocks being thrown between the two teams in public areas of the hotel.

Although it broke up without Police involvement, both hotel management and BFA officials were most concerned with assuring it did not escalate, said Dr.

Bean.

"Our efforts have been remedial to prevent further occurrences,'' he said.

"I have talked to the management of both teams. The boys now know they are representing their countries and that negative publicity in the press in Bermuda will spread to their home countries. They are very contrite, I can assure you.'' Jamaica's coach Jackie Walters said that only a few players from each team were involved but antagonism had started long before Monday's match.

"It started long before the game,'' he said. "There was some intimidation on their part, that's all I can say.'' "Some young players were subjected to taunting at various levels and things got out of hand,'' said Dr. Bean. "But matters were not serious or criminal.

They just involved young players with tough and difficult job to do. It's tough to be under such scrutiny for such a long time at a young age like 16.'' Monday night's match saw favourites Jamaica shut out Netherland Antilles. "It was a very difficult, a very emotional match,'' said Dr. Bean. "Several of the players on the losing team were in tears at the end of the match. I've never seen that occur in such early stages of a tournament before.'' He pointed out that the boys involved were from different countries and spoke different languages. "And they've all been trying a long time to get to this position. Sometimes I think we expect too much of them at 16 years.''