Can't get 1st node in XML to display

I am an ActionScript newbie and so I found a tutorial on kirupa.com for a xml slide show that I was able to adapt to create a scoreboard for football scores. Most of it seems to work just fine. When I click the next and previous buttons, the scores cycle through but when I initially launch, the first score doesn't display. The tutorial had an image loader to make sure the files had completely loaded and I had no need for it so I removed that part but evidently what I removed also helped to display the first node. Any help would be awesome!