With a little over three weeks to go before the national team leave for southern Africa, cricket bosses are to meet this morning to try and resolve the ongoing dispute over contracts.

Bermuda Cricket Board presented what they thought were fair terms to the players at a meeting on Friday, September 15 ? but have been forced to rethink the deal after several members of the team refused to accept it.

The players boycotted a training session on the morning after that first meeting, apparently in protest at what had been placed on the table ? though BCB chief executive Neil Speight said yesterday the incident was now ?water under the bridge?.

The source of the disagreement stems from the BCB?s decision to employ 14 of the players on a full-time basis in the run-up to the World Cup in March next year.

When the players were part-time, they actually received two salaries ? one from the BCB and one from their employers.

Under the full-time deal, however, they stand to receive only one and in some cases could be earning fractionally less than before.

When asked whether the disagreement amounted to a crisis, Speight insisted the contract originally placed before the players had been ?merely a draft? and that the Board were ?engaged in a collaborative process?.

He also rejected the suggestion that the negotiations were proving an unwelcome distraction for the players.

?We?ve said from the start that we will involve the players at all times and that meeting was part and parcel of this approach,? he said.

?We listened to what the players had to say about the terms of their contracts and the executive are meeting in the morning to consider their suggestions and concerns.

?Now clearly there is no guarantee that the Board is going to be able to give everybody exactly what they want, but these negotiations are a perfectly natural consequence of the decision to make some of the players full-time.

?This is a learning process for all of us and there was always going to be some to-ing and fro-ing at the outset.

?Now obviously in a perfect world we would be able to just wave a magic wand and come up with a solution immediately, but we don?t live in a perfect world.

?We?re very confident, though, that we can come with a deal which will be satisfactory to all concerned and also that we can do that before the squad leaves for Africa.?

It is understood that the new contracts will only be valid until the end of the year, when they will have to be renewed in light of any injuries, suspensions or omissions because of poor performance. Clay Smith, Dean Minors, Janeiro Tucker, Lionel Cann, Dwayne Leverock, Saleem Mukuddem, George O?Brien, Ryan Steede, Hasan Durham, Irving Romaine, Kwame Tucker, Kevin Hurdle, Stefan Kelly, Stephen Outerbridge.