Premiership Side Saracens Chair Urges English Clubs To Boycott Heineken Cup

Premiership rugby club Saracens Chair Nigel Wray insisted on Friday night that "there could be no genuine European competition without the English clubs and urged his fellow Premiership chairmen to back the boycott of next year’s Heineken Cup," according to Mick Cleary of the London TELEGRAPH. The decision of the "French clubs on Thursday to side with their federation was a jolt to English ambitions of an Anglo-French alliance but also opened up the possibility that the Premiership contingent might be persuaded back into the mainstream European fold." Wray "poured cold water on that notion." Wray said, "I hope the English clubs stay out. We have had enough of short-term expediency. It is time to stick to our guns." Wray admitted that the "decision of the Top 14 clubs, the Ligue Nationale de Rugby, undermined the English clubs" (TELEGRAPH, 11/29).