EXCITING news for die-hard rugby fans is that the 2016 Super Rugby season kicks-off on Friday, 26 February.
The 21st season of the popular and highly competitive competition has expanded to an 18-team format, which sees teams outside Australia, New Zealand and South Africa featuring for the first time.
Newbies to the competition include Sunwolves (Japan), Jaguars (Argentina) and Kings (South Africa).
The round-robin games will take place every weekend from 26 February to 16 July (with a break for international matches during June), followed by the finals series at the end of July and culminating in the final on 6 August.
Competition format
The 18 teams are grouped geographically.
There are two regional groups, each consisting of two conferences, namely the Australasian Group, comprised of five teams in the Australian Conference and five teams in the New Zealand Conference and the South African Group, made up of six South African teams, one Argentinean team and one Japanese team.
The South African Group is split into a four-team Africa 1 Conference and a four-team Africa 2 Conference.
In the group stages, there will be 17 rounds of matches, where each team will play 15 matches and have two rounds of byes for a competition total of 135 matches.
Teams will play six intra-conference matches, which means that in the four-team African Conferences, each team will play the other three teams in their conference home and away, while in the five-team Australasian Conferences, each team will play two teams home and away and will play once against the other two teams (one at home and one away).
The other nine matches will be a single round of matches against each team in the other conference in their group, as well as against each team from one of the conferences in the other group.
For 2016, the teams in Africa 1 will play the teams in the Australian Conference, while the teams in Africa 2 will play the teams in the New Zealand Conference.
The top team in each of the four conferences will automatically qualify to the quarter-finals, whilst the next top three teams in the Australasian Group and the next top team in the South African group will also qualify to the quarter-finals as wildcards.
The conference winners will be seeded number 1 to number 4 for the quarter-finals, in order of log points gained during the group stages, while the wildcards will be seeded as number 5 to number 8 in order of log points gained during the group stages.
In the quarter finals, the conference winners will host the first round of the finals, with the highest-seeded conference winner hosting the fourth-seeded wildcard entry, the second-seeded conference winner hosting the third-seeded wildcard entry, the third-seeded conference winner hosting the second-seeded wildcard entry and the fourth-seeded conference winner hosting the top-seed wildcard entry.
The quarter-final winners will progress to the semi-finals, where the highest seed to reach the semi-finals will host the lowest seed and the second-seeded semi-finalist will host the third-seeded team.
The winner of the semi-finals will progress to the final, at the venue of the highest-seeded team.
Conference teams
Australian Conference – Brumbies, Force, Rebels, Reds and Waratahs.
New Zealand Conference – Blues, Chiefs, Crusaders, Highlanders and Hurricanes.
Africa 1 Conference – Bulls, Cheetahs, Stormers and Sunwolves.
Africa 2 Conference – Jaguars, Kings, Lions and Sharks.
