The 2018 Super Rugby season was the 23rd season of

Super Rugby Super Rugby is a men's professional rugby union club competition involving teams from Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. It previously included teams from Argentina, Japan, and South Africa. Building on various Southern Hem ...

, an annual

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 its m ...

competition organised by SANZAAR between teams from

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

and

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

. After two seasons in which 18 teams participated, the 2018 season reverted to a 15-team competition, consisting of three geographical conferences. The

South African Rugby Union The South African Rugby Union (SARU) is the governing body for rugby union in South Africa and is affiliated to World Rugby. It was established in 1992 as the South African Rugby Football Union, from the merger of the South African Rugby Board ...

announced that the and would be dropped for the 2018 season, while the Australian Rugby Union, now known as

Rugby Australia Rugby Australia Ltd, previously named the Australian Rugby Union Limited and Australian Rugby Football Union Limited, is an Australian company operating the premier rugby union competition in Australia and teams. It has its origins in 1949. It ...

, announced the exclusion of the . The South African franchises thereafter entered the newly renamed

Pro14 The United Rugby Championship (URC) is an annual rugby union competition involving professional teams from Ireland, Italy, Scotland, South Africa, and Wales. The current name was adopted in 2021 when the league expanded to include four South Afr ...

competition, while the Western Force took part in the

National Rugby Championship The National Rugby Championship, known as NRC, was an Australian rugby union competition. It was contested by eight teams, seven from Australia and one from Fiji. The tournament ran from 2014 until 2019 before being disbanded in 2020 following t ...

, the domestic Australia competition, while preparing to enter the new

Global Rapid Rugby Global Rapid Rugby was an international rugby union competition that launched a showcase series for six professional teams in 2019, played in locations across the Asia-Pacific region. Rapid Rugby matches are slightly shorter than the tradition ...

competition in 2019.

Competition format

The 15 participating teams are divided into three geographical conferences: the Australian Conference (consisting of four Australian teams and the

ese ), the New Zealand Conference (consisting of five New Zealand teams), and the South African Conference (consisting of four South African teams and the from

). In the group stages, there are 19 rounds of matches, with each team playing 16 matches and having two rounds of byes, resulting in a total of 120 matches. Teams play eight inter-conference matches and eight cross-conference matches; they play all the other teams in their conference twice - once at home and once away - and play once against four of the teams in each of the other two conferences. The top team in each of the three conferences qualify for the quarterfinals, as do the next five teams with the best records across the three conferences, known as wildcards. The conference winners and best wildcard team hosted the quarterfinals. The quarterfinal winners progressed to the semifinal, and the winners of the semifinals advanced to the final.

Standings

Round-by-round

The table below shows each team's progression throughout the season. For each round, their cumulative points total is shown with the overall log position in brackets:

Matches

The fixtures for the 2018 Super Rugby competition were released on 21 September 2017. The following matches were played during the regular season:

Finals

The finals fixtures were as follows:

Quarterfinals

Semifinals

Final

Players

Squads

The following 2018 Super Rugby squads have been named:

Top scorers

The top ten try and point scorers during the 2018 Super Rugby season are:

Referees

The following refereeing panel was appointed by SANZAAR for the 2018 Super Rugby season:

Attendances

References

External links

* Super Rugby websites: *
Official Super Rugby website
*
Australia Super Rugby website
*
New Zealand Super Rugby website
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