The Russian Rugby Championship, officially known as the Pari - Russian Rugby Championship for sponsorship reasons (), 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, often lasting a few days, which is organized on a particular subject, or to bring together people who have a common interest. Conferences can be used as a form of group decision-making, although discussion, not always d ...

, 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 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 The Russian Rugby Championship, officially known as the Pari - Russian Rugby Championship for sponsorship reasons (), is Russia's top level professional men's rugby union competition. The Russian Rugby Championship is run by Rugby Union of Russia ...

Sports leagues established in 2005 2005 establishments in Russia

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

National rugby union premier leagues

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 ...

Professional sports leagues in Russia

History

Current Teams

Current Teams

Champions

Winners by year

See also

External links