The 2011 Super Rugby season was the first season of the new 15-team format for the

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 has previously included teams from Argentina, Japan, and South Africa. Super Rugby started as the S ...

competition, which involved teams from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Including its past iterations as Super 12 and Super 14, this was the 16th season for the Southern Hemisphere's premier transnational club competition. The season kicked off in February 2011, with pre-season matches held from mid-January. It finished in early July to allow players a recovery period for the

2011 Rugby World Cup The 2011 Rugby World Cup, was the seventh Rugby World Cup, a quadrennial international rugby union competition inaugurated in 1987. The World Rugby, International Rugby Board (IRB) selected New Zealand as the host country in preference to Japa ...

to be held in September and October; in future non-World Cup years, the competition will extend into August. This season saw the arrival of the

Melbourne Rebels The Melbourne Rebels were an Australian professional rugby union team based in Melbourne, Victoria (state), Victoria that competed in the Super Rugby competition. The Rebels made their debut in SANZAAR, SANZAR's Super Rugby tournament in 2011. T ...

, admitted to the competition as Australia's fifth team after entry by the

Southern Kings The Southern Kings were a South African professional rugby union team that competed in Super Rugby and Pro14. They were based in Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape province and played their home matches at Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium. They w ...

from South Africa was denied. This was also the first season of a revamped competition format, with a greater focus on matches within each participating country and an expanded finals series. During this season, the first ever

game was played outside the SANZAR region, taking place at

Twickenham Stadium Twickenham Stadium (; usually known as Twickenham, and for sponsorship purposes known as the Allianz Stadium Twickenham) is a rugby union stadium in Twickenham, London, England. It is owned by the Rugby Football Union (RFU), the English rugby u ...

between the

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and the

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. The match was moved to Twickenham because of the February

2011 Christchurch earthquake A major earthquake occurred in Christchurch on Tuesday 22 February 2011 at 12:51 p.m. New Zealand Daylight Time, local time (23:51 Coordinated Universal Time, UTC, 21 February). The () earthquake struck the Canterbury Region ...

. Proceeds of the game were also donated to the relief effort. The final was played at

Suncorp Stadium Brisbane Stadium (Lang Park), currently known as Suncorp Stadium for sponsorship reasons, is a multi-purpose stadium in the suburb of Milton, Queensland, Milton, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Nicknamed The Cauldron, it is a three-tiered rect ...

in Brisbane between the

Queensland Reds The Queensland Reds is the rugby union team based in Brisbane for the Australian state of Queensland that competes in the Southern Hemisphere's Super Rugby competition. Prior to 1996, they were a representative team selected from the rugby union ...

and the

. The Reds won 18–13 to claim their first Super Rugby title.

Competition format

Covering 21 weeks, the schedule featured a total of 125 matches. The 15 teams were grouped by geography, labelled the Australian Conference, New Zealand Conference and the South African Conference. With the new format, the regular season consisted of two types of matches: * Internal Conference Matches – Each team plays the other four teams in the same conference twice, home and away. (See table below for conferences.) * Cross Conference Matches – Each team plays four teams of the other two conferences away, and four teams of the other two conferences home, thus missing out on two teams (one from each of the other conferences). Each team plays two home and two away games against teams from each of the other countries, making a total of eight cross conference games for each team. The top team of each conference, plus the next top three teams in table points regardless of conference (wild card teams), moved on to the finals. The top two conference winners, based on table points, receive first-round byes. In the first round of the finals, the third conference winner is the No. 3 seed and hosts the wild card team with the worst record, and the best wild card team hosts the second-best wild card team. In the semi-finals, the No. 2 conference winner hosts the higher surviving seed from the first round, and the No. 1 conference winner hosts the other first-round winner. The final is hosted by the top remaining seed.

Standings

Source: NZ Herald Legend: * Rnd = Round completed (games played plus byes), W = Games won, D = Games drawn, L = Games lost, Bye = Number of byes, PF = Points for, PA = Points against, PD = Points difference, TB = Try bonus points, LB = Losing bonus points, Pts = Log points Points breakdown: * 4 points for a win * 2 points for a draw * 4 points for a bye * 1 bonus point for a loss by seven points or less * 1 bonus point for scoring four or more tries in a match The overall standings classification system: * Three conference winners/leaders in log points order * Three wildcard teams in log points order * The remaining nine teams in log points order * When teams are level on log points, they are sorted by number of games won, then overall points difference, then number of tries scored and then overall try difference Notes: * The Round 2 match between the Crusaders and Hurricanes scheduled for 26 February 2011 at

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was abandoned by agreement of both sides and SANZAR due to the February

. The match was declared a draw, with both sides earning 2 competition points.

Fixtures

Round 1

Round 2

Note * : The match was cancelled and called a draw due to the February

Round 3

Round 4

Round 5

Round 6

Round 7

Round 8

Round 9

Round 10

Round 11

Round 12

Round 13

Round 14

Round 15

Round 16

Round 17

Round 18

Finals

Qualifiers

;Qualifier 1 ;Qualifier 2

Semi-finals

;Semi-final 1 ;Semi-final 2

Final

Player statistics

Leading try scorers

Source: South African Rugby Union

Leading point scorers