A Western Counties representative has been ruled out of this weekend's end-of-season cricket finale, the Champion of Champions tournament.

Instead, the annual competition will feature just a single match between Central Counties champions Western Stars and Eastern Counties champs St.David's.

The match will be played at Southampton Oval on Sunday (11.00 a.m.).

Bermuda Cricket Board of Control yesterday opted for just one game after Western Counties were unable to produce a champion because of the ongoing second round fiasco.

PHC defeated Southampton Rangers in that game but were then disqualified for allegedly fielding an ineligible player (James Pace). When PHC's appeal of that decision was turned down, the club took out a court injunction to prevent the Western Counties final between Rangers and Warwick from being played.

A judge threw the matter out of court, demanding that the Counties settle the dispute themselves and at a meeting on Monday this week PHC were again declared winners. But no date could be found for the final against Warwick before this weekend's Champion of Champions tournament. Western Counties have thus been excluded for the first time in the history of the competition.

Denying that Western Counties had been kicked out of the tournament, Board president El James would only say yesterday that the BCBC's decision was based simply on the fact that the Counties had been unable to produce a winner within a reasonable period of time.

"All I can say is that there will be a final played in the competition this year, and that will be on Sunday between the Eastern and Central Counties,'' said James. "We reached that decision based on the information that we had last week.'' Wayne Raynor, secretary of the Western Counties could not be reached for comment last night.

Western Counties, however, are understood to have offered the Board a compromise by playing their final between PHC and Warwick on Saturday and having the Eastern and Central Counties winners play each other in the Champion of Champions semi-final on the same day.

The two winners would then have met in Sunday's final.

But the Board gave that idea the thumbs down, believing it would be unfair on Western Stars who were originally scheduled to play just one game on the weekend, that being the final against the winners of the Eastern and Western Counties champions.