The Russian Rugby Championship, officially known as the Liga Stavok - Russian Rugby Championship for sponsorship reasons (russian: Лига Ставок - Чемпионат России по регби), is Russia's top level professional men's rugby union competition. The Russian Rugby Championship is run by Russian Rugby Union and is contested by 10 teams as of the 2019-2020 season.

History

The founding of the league coincided with a period of rapid change for Russian rugby. The first Russian rugby championship, which succeeded the Soviet Rugby Championship, was played in 1992, under the name Russian Superleague. The league kept this name until 2004, when the competition was then rebranded as the Rugby Premier League. In 2007, Yug-Krasnodar were admitted to the competition, increasing the number of teams in the league to eight. Just one year later, in 2008, a further six teams from several of the lower division competitions were admitted into the Rugby Premier League. This increased the total number of teams again, to fourteen teams. The fourteen teams were split into three

conferences A conference is a meeting of two or more experts to discuss and exchange opinions or new information about a particular topic. Conferences can be used as a form of group decision-making, although discussion, not always decisions, are the main ...

, based on geography, in that season. One thing to note was that many of the elevated clubs geographically were semi-professional or even amateur in nature, which lead to a lack of competitive balance. 2010 saw another change of format to the Rugby Premier League where the East-West divide was removed, culminating in the formation of a 'Super Group'. This meant that VVA-Podmoskovye Monino, Krasny Yar, Enisey-STM,

Slava Moscow Slava Moscow is a Russian rugby union club from Moscow. They participate in the Professional Rugby League, the premier rugby competition of Russia. They play in yellow and red. History Honours * USSR/ Russian Championship (2): 1979, 1982 * Runn ...

, RC Novokuznetsk and Imperia-Dynamo as well as

Fili Moscow Fili Moscow is a Russian rugby union club based in the western part of Moscow. Fili Moscow are sponsored by the Khrunichev Space Centre, builders of the International Space Station. Fili have in modern times found it hard to emulate their achievem ...

and Spartak GM were scheduled to play each other in a straight home-and-away league format.

Current Teams

Note: Flags indicate national union as has been defined under WR eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-WR nationality

Champions

Winners by year

External links

Official website

Russian rugby statistics
{{Top sport leagues in Russia Professional Rugby League Sports leagues established in 2005 2005 establishments in Russia

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...

National rugby union premier leagues

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 ...

Professional sports leagues in Russia

History

Current Teams

Current Teams

Champions

Winners by year

See also

External links