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

, an annual

rugby union Rugby union football, commonly known simply as rugby union in English-speaking countries and rugby 15/XV in non-English-speaking world, Anglophone Europe, or often just rugby, is a Contact sport#Terminology, close-contact team sport that orig ...

competition organised by

SANZAAR SANZAAR (South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Argentina Rugby; previously known as SANZAR) is the body which oversees Super Rugby and The Rugby Championship competitions in rugby union. SANZAAR meets annually and is composed of the CEOs fr ...

between teams from

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

and

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

. 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 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 is a ...

, 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. For sponsorship reasons the league is known as the Vodacom United Rugby Championship in ...

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 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

Conference standings

Overall 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

Quarter-finals

Semi-finals

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
{{DEFAULTSORT:Super Rugby

2018 Events January * January 1 – Bulgaria takes over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, after the Estonian presidency. * January 4 – SPLM-IO rebels loyal to Chan Garang Lual start a raid against Juba, capital of ...

2018 in Argentine rugby union 2018 in Australian rugby union 2017–18 in Japanese rugby union 2018–19 in Japanese rugby union 2018 in New Zealand rugby union 2018 in South African rugby union 2018 rugby union tournaments for clubs