Darry Worthington takes a look at the format of the recently announced Super Rugby Aotearoa tournament. We also provide you with a fixtures list for the competition at the end of the piece.
Image copyright – Steve Haag Sports
Rugby fans rejoice. In less than a month – barring an escalation in COVID-19 cases in New Zealand – we’ll have some live rugby action to feast upon in the form of the recently announced Super Rugby Aotearoa tournament.
The New Zealand only competition will feature the five Kiwi sides and will get underway on Saturday the 13th of June. While it is still early doors and betting hasn’t been put up yet, we thought it would be a good idea to give our rugby readers a bit of a lowdown on the tournament.
We’ll have a betting preview for you to peruse as soon as the markets open up. We’ll also run the rule over all the sides once the teams have confirmed their rosters – a number of Japan and Europe-based All Blacks are set to turn out in this tournament but contract negotiations are still ongoing with a number of them.
Tournament Format
The tournament will be a straight round-robin format with all five teams playing each other home and away. There will be two fixtures a weekend with one game being played on a Saturday and the other being played on a Sunday. Each week, one of the sides will enjoy a bye week.
The tournament will run over a course of 10 weeks starting on the 13th of May and ending on the Sunday the 16th of August. There will be no semi-finals or finals with the team that occupies top spot on the log at the close of the tournament taking the spoils.
It seems that all games will be played in front of partisan crowds with no mention of neutral venues being made and games listed for Forsyth Barr, the FMG Waikato Stadium, Westpac Stadium (now known as the Sky Stadium). The Crusaders and Blues are yet to announce what venues they will use with the official fixtures list displaying Auckland and Canterbury rather than Eden Park and Rugby League Park.
The games will be played in front of empty stands with no fans allowed into the stadium due to threat of COVID-19.
The tournament’s conclusion will be closely followed by the kick-off of the Mitre 10 Cup which is scheduled to get underway on the 11th of September.
Fixtures List
