Rotherham will be given a parachute payment of £750,000 if they are denied entry into the Zurich Premiership on the grounds that they do not have a suitable stadium.

The runaway leaders of the first division had hoped to develop their Clifton Lane ground to conform with the criteria governing crowd capacity and seating requirements for England's top league. But some members of the cricket club with whom they share the ground have objected and they will instead propose playing at Rotherham United's Millmoor stadium.

That ground satisfies all Premier Rugby's requirements bar one, that its primary tenant is a rugby club rather than a football club. It is concerned that there are too many clubs who are sharing with football clubs.

The criteria specified that a club had to have primacy of tenancy at its ground because of concerns that there was a surfeit of clubs sharing.

"We have a very close relationship with United," said the Rotherham chief executive Jim Kilfoyle, who added that reports that the club would sell out to Newport and relocate to South Wales were premature.

"When both Rotherham sides won promotion two years ago, we shared an open-top bus and a civic reception. We are confident we will be able to enter into a partnership with them which will satisfy the criteria. Newport is not an option because we want to remain in control of our own destiny. If we were taken over, we would cease to exist and we have come too far for that to happen. We will be putting Millmoor down as the ground we will be playing at next season."

The deadline for satisfying Premier Rugby's criteria is Sunday and Rotherham will be visited later next week by a team of auditors who will report back to England Rugby Ltd about whether the club meets the conditions for membership of the Premiership.

Newport's owner Tony Brown, whose club is an associate member of the Rugby Football Union, confirmed he had made a bid to buy Rotherham. "We could bring a lot to the Premiership: we have a strong side and probably the best army of travelling supporters in the country," he said.

The chief executive of Premier Rugby, Howard Thomas, stressed that Rotherham's bid was not doomed to fail because they intended to play at a football ground.

"Rotherham brought a lot to the Premiership last season," he said. "Their fate will depend on the audit and it is most certainly not predetermined."

· Saracens yesterday met the Leinster coach Matt Williams who has been invited to take over from Francois Pienaar as the club's director of rugby. The Wasps hooker Phil Greening has been banned for one match after being cited for stamping in England's sevens victory over Wales in Hong Kong last weekend. He will miss Sunday's Premiership match against Leicester.

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