Easter ‘appalled' by Prem Cup exclusion

NICK Easter has described the decision to exclude his Chinnor side and Cambridge from next season’s Premiership Cup as “appalling and astonishing.”

- JON NEWCOMBE

Premiership Rugby, who organize the Premiership Cup, have only invited the top 10 teams from last season’s Championship into what will be a streamlined 20-team competition, with National One champions Chinnor and last year’s bottom club Cambridge left out in the cold.

It was first mooted in May that only 10 of the 12 Championship clubs may be involved but the bad news was only confirmed to the two disappointed parties recently.

Both clubs have been offered a small amount of compensation – but nothing like enough to cover the loss of three home games – and are now scrambling around trying to find matches to fill the huge holes in their fixture list.

Easter, Chinnor’s DoR, has some choice words to say about the people running the game in England.

“Amongst all the celebrations of our triumph last year was the prospect of being in the Prem Cup, but rather than Prem Rugby saying ‘you’re welcome, you’re included, we want to help grow the game, have a little bit of time in the sun yourselves’, they have pulled the rug from under us. It is a cartel wielding its axe of power. It is anti-competition,” he said.

“The show is the show and it has been like that for the last 20 years in English rugby. If you’re not a top feeder you don’t really have much say in the direction you are going to go or how things should be done. You have got pretty inept people making decisions most of the time.