*** Welcome to piglix ***

2001-02 Welsh-Scottish League

2001–02 Welsh-Scottish League
Countries  Scotland  Wales
Champions Wales Llanelli RFC
Runners-up Wales Newport RFC
Matches played 110

Llanelli won the third and final Welsh-Scottish League.

The top 5 Welsh teams plus Glasgow and Edinburgh qualified for next season's Heineken Cup. At the end of this season Glasgow Warriors and Edinburgh Rugby left the Scottish-Welsh League; making the 2002-03 a nine team Welsh Premier Division. The bottom side Caerphilly thus avoided regulation.

With 11 teams in the league it was impossible to have an even round system where each team played one another in a weekend. (One team would always have to sit out.)

The fixture list was instead devised so that teams would fulfil their fixtures in weekend or mid-week slots.

Each team would play 20 rounds in total.

The first 4 or 5 rounds for each club were hosted jointly by the Celtic League (dependent on which Celtic League pool those teams were in).

These rounds counted both for the Welsh-Scottish League and for the Celtic League.

Pool A of the Celtic League had 8 teams, Pool B had 7 teams in total. Of that, Pool A had 6 Scottish-Welsh teams and Pool B had 5 Scottish-Welsh teams.

Thus Scottish and Welsh teams of Pool A had 5 matches against one another. Scottish and Welsh teams of Pool B had 4 matches against one another.

These matches were played first in allocated slots.

After 7 slots, each team had now played 4 or 5 rounds (depending on whether they were in Celtic League Pool A or B).

The remaining slots and rounds played were purely for the Welsh-Scottish League.


...
Wikipedia

...