Dylan Hartley will not appeal against the 11-week suspension he received on Sunday for the red card he was shown in the Premiership final between Northampton and Leicester at Twickenham the day before for swearing at the referee, Wayne Barnes, and calling him a cheat.
Hartley had until Tuesday morning to appeal and his decision means he will miss the Lions tour to Australia and not play again until next season.
The Rugby Football Union released the written judgment of the three-man panel that heard the hooker's case on Sunday once it knew there would be no further hearing.
The panel was told that Barnes had spoken to Hartley twice before he showed him a red card. In his report to the hearing, Barnes said: "Two minutes before (sending him off), I had called the player across and told him to think about the way he was speaking to me. I had done this on at least two occasions as a scrum was setting he said: 'As usual he's against us.'"
Barnes said that on two other occasions, following scrums that ended in penalties to Leicester, Hartley had asked to speak to him only to be told when he gave the Northampton captain the opportunity: "I don't want to talk to you."
Hartley maintained that he had not called Barnes a "fucking cheat" after another scrum penalty at the end of the first half, but had been aiming the abuse at his opposite number, Leicester's Tom Youngs.
Northampton provided a camera angle they felt corroborated their captain's account but the panel found that Youngs was on the floor at the time and Hartley was looking across the field in Barnes's direction.
Hartley also denied saying "he's against us" telling the hearing that he had been telling his front row colleagues that, given Leicester's strength in the scrum, they were "up against it".
The panel, while praising the way he conducted himself in front of them, found that his account was not credible.
