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Coach blasts BFA after schedule change

Southampton Rangers’ coach Keith Jennings has called for Bermuda Football Association to ‘get their act together’ following their late postponement of tonight’s opening Dudley Eve games.Jennings believes it’s unacceptable for the BFA to be already switching fixtures, considering the new season only started at the weekend with the Charity Cup match.Tonight’s matches between North Village and Dandy Town, and Devonshire Cougars against Rangers, have been postponed because they clashed with a referees’ course. Those games will now be played on September 28 at BAA Field, the BFA said yesterday.After the governing body released the fixture schedule more than a month ago, Jennings said the BFA must have known on which dates they would be hosting the FIFA-run referees assistants course and should have planned ahead.He urged the BFA to become better organised and start informing clubs of any fixture changes more than 24 hours in advance.“I hadn’t received a message as of early this week and had to hear it from someone else that the games were being cancelled,” said Jennings.“From my understanding they have cancelled the games due to a refereeing course, which to me is unacceptable considering the schedule has been out for a while. Now in the first week the BFA are changing the schedule.“They should have known the refereeing course was going to be held at this time and made adjustments. Now it’s an inconvenience to not only the players but also the public who were anticipating seeing football.“To me this is wrong and on top of that they haven’t notified anyone of the changes yet. It was by chance I found out when I went to the BFA to confirm the games were being played. I’ve had enough about all of this and they need to get their act together because there’s too much of this going on.“This affects my team directly because we are preparing for a game and yet we won’t be told about any changes until a press release or something comes out. This has gone on long enough.”Jennings said too often players and coaches were having their lives ‘messed about’ by needless fixture changes because of the BFA’s inability to organise their fixture schedule.“On a personal level, people’s livelihood’s have to be changed around now,” he said. “If I wanted to go away with my family in December for a holiday I can’t because my team will have games that have to be made up due to their inability to do their job.“This is a real inconvenience to everyone. They said they brought out the schedule early so people would know exactly when the games were.”The next Dudley Eve games will see PHC take on Cougars, and Dandy Town face St George’s at Bernard Park. Those matches will kick off at 3 pm and 5 pm respectively on Saturday.