How will the Super 15 work ?

The format for the Super15 is not yet completely set in stone but this is what we know so far.

 

There will be three pools or geographic conferences each containing five teams - see table on the right.

Australia, South Africa and New Zealand will each host one pool and the new 15th team will participate in the Australian pool.

 

The tournament will start in late February each year.

 

In 2011 and other world cup years the tournament will start earlier to make space for the world cup. British and Irish Lions tour years (ie. 2013) could also see the tournament being forced to start two to three weeks earlier.

 

The tournament will start with a series of teams playing the other teams in their conference.

 

After the first round of conference games the teams will then play four of the five teams in each of the other two conferences.

 

The eight games will be a mix of home and away games as they are now.

 

The tournament will then return to a conference format again and another round of domestic challenges as in the first stage but with the venues reversed. This means that each team in a conference will have a home and an away match with their fellow conference teams.

 

Once these three stages are complete teams will have played a total of 16 round-robin games.

 

A winner from each conference will be determined from the results in the previous three stages. Each conference will have one winner and therefore Australia, South Africa and New Zealand will each be gauranteed to have one team participating in the finals.

 

It's not over yet.

The SuperRugby tournament will take a break in June when the All Blacks, Springboks and Wallabies will host tours from international teams - historically from the Northern Hemisphere. Once the June tours are complete, SuperRugby resumes and the finals start.

 

The new format for the Super 15 finals is an expanded format and will feature six teams rather than the Super14's four team format. The six teams will be made up of the conference winners and the three next teams with the highest total number of points.

The expanded finals is expected to start in July and will therefore finish in early August.