For the second time this month Bermuda Football Association coaching committee chairman Jon Beard has been forced to respond to criticism regarding the national programme.

However, while two weeks ago saw players taking issue with coaching appointments, the latest backlash comes as a result of squad selection for the senior team.

Devonshire Cougars' player/coach Shawn Smith, via a letter to Sports Mailbox , last Friday, took issue with the list of individuals assembled to train for Bermuda, accusing the BFA of bias against his club based on the fact that only one of his players, Hey Wolffe, was chosen.

"I find it very disturbing that only one player from Devonshire Cougars has been selected to train,'' wrote Smith, a former Bermuda international centre-back/midfielder. "This demonstration of biasness is one of the reasons why we have not been successful for many years in international competition.'' Beard, though, strongly denied any deliberate attempt to exclude players from the Devonshire side, while noting his disgust of the trend by those closely associated with the sport to criticise the governing body through the media.

"I can assure you and anybody else that there is definitely no plan of anybody being deliberately shunned. Nobody's been shunned by the BFA at all,'' said Beard. "He's blasted the selection process used by the BFA. Well the selection process is to allow the coaches to pick the teams, and if that's what he's blasting, then I'm not sure what exactly he's blasting. Because that seems, to me, to be a fairly common way of how teams are selected.

"We seem to have this strange idea at the moment where people are writing a letter to the BFA and straight off to the media, which is a very strange way of trying to do business.

"I don't think we can actually do business like that. I mean if people want us to respond to them, then write to us and then the onus is on the BFA to respond to them.'' Part of Smith's apparent `beef' was the fact that club coaches were not allowed input in presenting potential candidates for selection and Beard did not deny the assertion.

Rather Beard accepted the comment as one held by the coach, and again added that his views would be better served if he made an legitimate approach to the governing body.

"With all due respect to what he has to say, Mark Trott has been around a football for a while and he certainly knows the players who are out there,'' said Beard. "So he and David Furbert, at this stage, have made the selection.

"It's not a closed shop this national team. Players will come in and out of it accordingly. The fact that one player was involved from Devonshire Rec., shows that they were not ignored.

"Shawn's comment seems to be that he should have been selected. I'm sure there are players up and down the country who feel they should have been selected. Fair enough, everybody does .. I wish I'd been selected.

"So, if Shawn feels that way then he just needs to keep showing out on the pitch and let the coaches make their decisions as is.''