Three of the five foreign-born athletes seeking to represent Bermuda at the Commonwealth Games in March have been ruled ineligible.

Triathletes Riaan and Evan Naude from South Africa as well as Englishman Jamie Brown have had their appeals rejected by the Commonwealth Games Federation while gymnast Kaisey Griffiths will be allowed to compete in Melbourne.

A decision on cyclist Lynn Patchett?s eligibility is still pending.

The news was released in a Bermuda Olympic Association press statement.

Included alongside Griffiths in the list of athletes who had been ?approved? by the CGF were triathletes Flora Duffy and Karen Smith ? although the BOA have at no stage indicated that there were any problems with their eligibility.

The BOA have already been widely criticised for their failure to inform non-Bermudian athletes striving for months to reach the qualifying standard that a 2003 rule change had thrown their right to compete at the Games into serious doubt.

At a meeting of the CGF general assembly in Jamaica two years ago, all 71 member nations ? including Bermuda ? agreed that from 2006, only athletes who were nationals of the countries they intended to represent would be permitted to take part.

Previously an athlete only had to have lived in their adopted home for three years.

Adding fuel to the fire last night was Bermuda Triathlon Association president Stephen Petty, who revealed that the BOA had actually funded the Naude brothers and Brown on numerous trips overseas to compete at triathlon events, where the aim was to obtain the Games? qualifying standard.

The BOA reportedly paid for the Naude twins to compete at the World Triathlon Championships in Hawaii last October while Brown received funding to compete at triathlons in Tampa and Chicago.

?I just cannot understand why the BOA agreed to fund these athletes who were trying to achieve the qualifying time for the Games when they knew very well that they would not be able to compete,? said Petty.

?And for them to try and say that the associations and the athletes must share some of the blame for the confusion strikes me as ridiculous.

?The BOA were the organisation who agreed to the rule change in 2003 because they are the people who sit on the (CGF) general assembly. They knew about it but didn?t tell anybody.

?Meanwhile not only were the Naude brothers and Jamie Brown training to reach the qualifying time, but the BOA were actually supporting them financially in order to do so.

?And now they?ve included Flora Duffy and Karen Smith on the list of athletes who have been approved when there was never any doubt over them. I can only assume the BOA included those names to try and camouflage the fact that they have really messed up.

?I?m not happy about this ? but I?m only an administrator.

?The Naude brothers and Jamie have been working hard for months and I cannot imagine how bad they must feel now, having done all that work, to be told they cannot go.?

BOA president John Hoskins was unavailable for comment last night.

He had previously admitted that the BOA should have communicated news of the rule change to the athletes concerned.

But he also insisted that the athletes themselves had a responsibility to check their eligibility before they began to train.

The BOA?s statement indicated that the executive committee would meet in the very near future to discuss any further options that could be taken in relation to the ineligible athletes.