A two-pronged call has gone out to help boost the number of medically trained people at Island soccer matches.

The plea, from both the St John Ambulance Brigade and Bermuda Football Association, follows a number of incidents where paramedics have had to be called to deal with injuries to players.

In the recent Premiership match between Devonshire Colts and Southampton at White Hill Field, firefighters were initially called when a Colts' player suffered a suspected broken ankle. An ambulance arrived later and ferried the player to hospital.

Then in another Colts match at Devonshire Rec., paramedics were summoned when a Devonshire Cougars player suffered a severe gash beneath his eye.

The latest incident occurred in the match between North Village and Somerset at Bernard Park, when a Village player landed on his head after going up for a header.

With the exception of the Devonshire Rec. match the games were held up for upwards of 20 minutes as the injured parties were treated on the pitch.

BFA President Neville Tyrrell said some clubs were better than others when it came to having qualified first aiders among their ranks.

"There are some clubs who are pro-active enough to have people manning all the areas they want, whether it be medic, whether it be physio or whether it be assistant coaches and things like that,'' he said.

"But there are some clubs who don't give it that thought until something happens. It's something we would like to encourage the clubs to do because you never know when you are going to require medical assistance.'' Tyrrell's call was backed by Lyndon Raynor, President of Bermuda Referees' Association.

"Clubs must take some responsibility to ensure they have a medically trained person on their coaching staff to assist with such incidents,'' he said.

"The incident that happened at Bernard Park ... if a player falls awkwardly there is not much you can do until the ambulance arrives but if there's medically trained personnel from the clubs they can go a long way to treating injuries.

"The quicker you are able to diagnose and start remedying the problem the shorter the recovery time will be.'' When there is not a full programme of matches, St. John volunteers are often on hand, but Susan Parsons, the organisation's executive director on the Island, said there simply weren't enough people to man every game.

"We had an ambulance and three personnel (at the Martonmere Cup match) because there happened to be somebody available but we can't give guarantees because we don't pay these people,'' she said.

Appealing for more people to offer their services she said: "We'd love to have more volunteers. The situation now is that we have gone onto the winter schedule. From now until May we have to cover all the equestrian events, all the go-karting, all the motocross and scrambling and all the bike races.

"All their schedules go from now until May, every weekend. It's quite an onerous task.'' Parsons said the organisation relied on people, including the BFA, to get their schedules in as soon as possible so they could plan accordingly.

"Some people get the schedules into us early, some people phone you on a Thursday to see if you can cover Sunday which makes things extremely difficult. We just do the best we can,'' she said.

"If we had the funds and personnel to be at every event we would love to be at every event.'' More information on the St. John Ambulance service can be obtained by calling 236-7831.