The 2011–12 Rugby Pro D2 was the second-level French

rugby union Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In it ...

club competition, behind the

Top 14 The Top 14 () is a professional rugby union club competition that is played in France. Created in 1892, the Top 14 is at the top of the national league system operated by the French National Rugby League, also known by its French initialism o ...

, for the 2011–12 season. It ran alongside the 2011–12 Top 14 competition; both competitions are operated by the

Ligue Nationale de Rugby The French National Rugby League (french: Ligue Nationale de Rugby), known as the LNR, manages the professional rugby sector in France, by delegation of the Ministry of Youth and Sports and the French Rugby Federation. LNR * organises, manages and ...

(LNR).

Grenoble lat, Gratianopolis , commune status = Prefecture and commune , image = Panorama grenoble.png , image size = , caption = From upper left: Panorama of the city, Grenoble’s cable cars, place Saint- ...

claimed the automatic promotion spot as league champions, and

Mont-de-Marsan Mont-de-Marsan (; Occitan: ''Lo Mont de Marçan'') is a commune and capital of the Landes department, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, southwestern France. Population Military installations The French Air and Space Force operates the '' Constantin Roza ...

earned the second promotion spot by winning a playoff among the next four teams. Béziers and

Périgueux Périgueux (, ; oc, Peireguers or ) is a commune in the Dordogne department, in the administrative region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, southwestern France. Périgueux is the prefecture of Dordogne, and the capital city of Périgord. It is al ...

finished in the two bottom spots, which would normally lead to automatic relegation to

Fédérale 1 Le championnat de France de première division fédérale, a.k.a. Fédérale 1, is a French rugby union club competition, the fifth highest level of amateur rugby. The competition has been organised by the Fédération Française de Rugby since 2 ...

. However, Béziers were spared the drop when Bourgoin were forcibly relegated to Fédérale 1 for financial reasons.

Teams

Competition format

The top team at the end of the regular season (after all the teams played one another twice, once at home, once away), is declared champion and earns a spot in the next

season. Teams ranked second to fifth compete in promotion playoffs, with the semifinals being played at the home ground of the higher-ranked team. The final is then played on neutral ground, and the winner earned the second ticket to the next

. The LNR uses a slightly different bonus points system from that used in most other rugby competitions. It trialled a new system in 2007–08 explicitly designed to prevent a losing team from earning more than one bonus point in a match, a system that also made it impossible for either team to earn a bonus point in a drawn match. LNR chose to continue with this system for subsequent seasons. France's bonus point system operates as follows: * 4 points for a win. * 2 points for a draw. * 1 "bonus" point for winning while scoring at least 3 more tries than the opponent. This replaces the standard bonus point for scoring 4 tries regardless of the match result. * 1 "bonus" point for losing by 7 points (or less).

Season table

: Updated as of 21 May 2012

Results

Results table

The home team is listed in the left column.

Promotion playoffs

All times

CEST CEST or cest may refer to: * Central European Summer Time (UTC+2), daylight saving time observed in the central European time zone * Cognitive-Experiential Self-Theory * Chemical Exchange Saturation Transfer, a subset of Magnetization transfer in ...

Semi-finals

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Final

References

External links

*
Ligue Nationale de Rugby
– Official website *
Midi Olympique
*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pro D2 season 2011-12

Pro D2 Rugby Pro D2, also known as Pro D2 is the second tier of rugby union club competition division in France. It is operated by Ligue Nationale de Rugby (LNR) which also runs the division directly above, the first division Top 14. Rugby Pro D2 was in ...