Both teams were a little apprehensive. It was a bit of a checkers match at first.

You're never quite sure how they're going to react during the first part of the year.

I am still apprehensive about the whole thing.

We'd really have liked Vermont to have joined the league next year.

We played what I think is a really solid, physical team in Lowell. They're bigger and stronger than we are. They're older and a bit more experienced. We took a lot of hits, but we got up and played.

This situation calls for the company's going into crisis mode, adopting a degree of urgency that recognizes if things don't break right, the unthinkable could happen, that time is of the essence.