St. David's, Bermuda's most successful team during the 2001 cricket season, have been forced to withdraw from the Caribbean League Champions Tournament which is scheduled to take place in Trinidad and Tobago on May 25.

Player-coach Clay Smith said that the east end club had "regrettably pulled out", taking that decision rather than attempting to compete in the event without many of their regular players.

"We would have definitely loved to have gone and represented Bermuda but there were a few reasons that made us evaluate our position before coming to this conclusion," said Smith.

"Firstly, one main factor was that we were not going to have too many of our top players unavailable.

"O.J.Pitcher and Chris Foggo will be away in England and South Africa respectively and we also had one or two other top players unsure if they could make it.

"It would mean that we would have to go to a competition of this magnitude with an understrength team. If we are going to spend the sort of money it requires to get us there, we would prefer to spend it more wisely with our full squad whereby more of our players could get greater benefits."

Another reason, according to the player-coach, was that St. David's intend to return to the tournament in which they played in Durham, England, two years ago.

That, again, is expected to be an expensive venture and the club was unsure whether it could afford two overseas trips in one season.

"Yes, we will require a big fund-raising programme for that one and rather than take an understrength team to the Caribbean we may as well concentrate on the lone trip to England,"' said Smith. "It's too bad that the trip south didn't work out. We were on a high and looking towards arranging to see two one day internationals between the West Indies and India.

"We had also organised a charter flight to go down to Trinidad and Tobago. Our intention was to travel with about 60 to 70 fans but at the last minute we had to make this tough decision and it's really unfortunate. We had so many supporters willing to go and support us."

In addition to the youngsters Pitcher and Foggo who would not be available for the trip to Trinidad, top batsman Glenn Blakeney and Phillip Pitcher would have been missing from the line-up as well.

"The way I look at the situation is that we have high standards for ourselves. If we are going to compete we want to do well, not just go there for a trip," added Smith.

"Ideally, we would want to travel abroad with our full squad, one that would be competitive and capable of doing both our club and Bermuda proud as the sole representatives in the tournament. But doing so without so many of our talented early order bats would not be a wise thing."