about officiating soccer matches despite suffering a highly publicised on-field physical attack.

Scott, speaking to The Royal Gazette yesterday, said that there was no way the assault -- allegedly purported by North Village Rams midfielder Kacy Simons -- would keep him from resuming his role as a match official.

"I'm certainly not going to let something like this stop me, because I don't think that's fair,'' said Scott, a Grade Two referee. "The show must go on.

If I'm to let this stop me, then whatever he did, he would have won, and I'm not going to let people like that do that.

"I never thought it would have happened to me, but hey, you never know what's going on in a person's mind.

"Apparently he has domestic problems or whatever the case may be, and a lot of times people bring their problems to the soccer field.'' In fact, Scott, who spent most of his youth and senior playing days as a left winger for Somerset Trojans, sounded anxious to get back in the thick of the action.

And he was not totally in agreement with the decision by Bermuda Referees Association to suspend their services, but understood it to be as a result of more than the most recent incident of violence in soccer.

He pointed to the failure of clubs in maintaining order within their grounds as a major cause and effect.

"I don't think it's fair,'' he said. "Everybody shouldn't have to stop because of one individual, but it was just an escalation of so many different issues that this problem brought it all to a head.

"Hopefully everything will work out ... the show must go on. Clubs need to monitor the people that they bring into their clubs. And if you know that this person has a bad disciplinary record, you need to monitor that.

"No one can tell me that clubs don't know who is on their roster. You cannot tell me that you sign somebody up or somebody comes to your club as a player or member without knowing their disciplinary record.

"The discipline has gone out of clubs, it's deteriorating, and that's probably why it's to the point that it is now. Once upon a time you had discipline and it was dealt with one time, but now there's a lot of slackness going on, so you need to get a hold of that discipline again.

"You have people coming to games bringing beer in bottles and stuff. One time they had stopped it, but it's slackening off and people are losing respect ... we need to bring that respect back.

"People and players also need to be knowledgeable of the rules of the game, a lot simply aren't knowledgeable of the rules of the game.'' Simons recently received suspensions of 12 and five years from Bermuda Football Association and North Village respectively for his actions during the match featuring Rams and Tuff Dogs, but his woes appear far from over.

For the matter involving Scott is now set to move from the field to the courts, with Scott having pressed assault charges against his one-time team-mate. However, Scott said that he would never have gone so far if he had not been forced into hospital where he underwent surgery to repair damage to his nose.

"If I didn't have to go to the hospital I would have looked to even talk to him personally to find out what is the problem,'' explained Scott, who said he bore no malice. "But having to go to the hospital, it's inevitable that you press charges, because it's an inconvenience to me.

"I had to get an operation, surgery.''