St. David's 3

Paget Lions 1

There was an ugly New Year's welcome to the resumption of league football yesterday when a First Division match at Lord's, St. David's was forced to be abandoned by referee Antoine Augustus because of fan violence.

The official was called upon to make the decision to end play when Paget fans and a player or two from the same club were involved in skirmishes during the interval prompting Augustus to take the precaution of not allowing play to re-start.

Players of neither the home side nor their fans were involved from the outset altough one or two of their players could be seen trying to play the role of peace-makers to curb the disturbance which was restricted to a bottle or two being thrown and later a hard, plastic container being thrown towards a group of players outside the St. David's dressing room.

"I had to do it," said Augustus of his ruling to stop the contest right there and then. "We were about to go into the field to resume play after the half but all of these things were going on and abandoning play was the right thing to do."

St. David's coach Andrew Bascome wad dismayed and stunned by the abandonment, hinting that he felt it could have continued.

"I don't know why the game was abandoned, the referee just handed me the players' cards and said the game was abandoned. What bothers me is that the same teams play again on Tuesday night."

One official, who didn't wish to be named, told The Royal Gazette: "We had to stop the game, there was just too much foolishness going on out there. Bottles were breaking and then there were idiots shouting 'I'm a gangster'."

On the field of play the home side had dominated things to that period with Angelo Cannonier scoring a hat-trick, goals coming after three, 10 and 44 minutes while Paget got an early equaliser through Blaine Richardson after five minutes.

St. George's Colts 0

Somerset Eagles 0

A missed penalty by Darrin Dowling after 80 minutes proved costly for visiting Eagles in this clash at Wellington Oval.

Fred Hall in the Eastenders' goal dived to deny Dowling, his heroics enabling them to come away with a share of the points. Eagles had a slight edge throughout, but the home side were always competitive.

A low point in the game came when two players were given marching orders, Ruffins Hill of Eagles for fighting and Kuma Smith of Colts for a second bookable offence.

X'Roads 8

BAA 0

Mid-table X'Roads overwhelmed visiting BAA at Garrison field in the day's most one-sided match-up.

Nashon Smith and Dennis Musson Jr. led the onslaught with two goals apiece while single strikes came from Neville Gumbs, Hisham Boukhloufi, Uthmuni Talbot and Alvin Woods.

•The match between Southampton Rangers and Prospect United was not played because of an apparent mix-up over venues.