2014 Super Rugby season
| 2014 Super Rugby season | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Countries |
Australia (5 teams) New Zealand (5 teams) South Africa (5 teams) |
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| Tournament format(s) | Round-robin and knockout | ||
| Champions | Waratahs (1st title) | ||
| Matches played | 125 | ||
| Tries scored | 614 (4.91 per match) | ||
| Top point scorer(s) | Bernard Foley (252) | ||
| Top try scorer(s) |
Israel Folau / Nemani Nadolo (12) |
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| Official website | Official site | ||
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The 2014 Super Rugby season is the fourth season of the 15-team format for the Super Rugby competition involving teams from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. For sponsorship reasons, this competition is known as Asteron Life Super Rugby in Australia, Investec Super Rugby in New Zealand and Vodacom Super Rugby in South Africa. Including its past incarnations as Super 12 and Super 14, this is the 19th season for the Southern Hemisphere's premier transnational club competition. The conference games will take place every weekend from 15 February until 12 July (with a three-week break between rounds 16 and 17 for internationals games), followed by the finals series, culminating in the grand final on 2 August. The winners of the 2014 Super Rugby Season were the New South Wales Waratahs
Covering 24 weeks, the schedule features a total of 125 matches. The 15 teams are grouped by geography, labelled the Australian Conference, New Zealand Conference and the South African Conference. The regular season consists of two types of matches:
The top team of each conference, plus the next top three teams in table points regardless of conference (wild card teams), will move 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 #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 #2 conference winner hosts the higher surviving seed from the first round, and the #1 conference winner hosts the other first-round winner. The final is hosted by the top remaining seed.
The two-legged promotion/relegation play-off initially scheduled between the bottom team in the South African Conference and the Kings was abolished following a meeting on 13 February 2014.
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The top six teams will qualify to the finals, with their final positions in the overall log determining their seedings in the finals. The third-placed team (i.e. the conference winners with the worst overall record) will host the sixth-placed team in the qualifiers, while the fourth-placed team will host the fifth-placed team. The top two teams (i.e. the two conference winners with the best overall record) will qualify directly to the semi-finals, where they will have home advantage against the two qualifier winners, with the top team hosting the qualifier winner with the lower seeding and the second-placed team hosting the qualifier winner with the higher seeding. The two semi-final winners will progress to the final, with the team with the higher seeding having home advantage.
Points breakdown:
* 4 points for a win
* 2 points for a draw
* 1 bonus point for a loss by seven points or less
* 1 bonus point for scoring four or more tries in a match
Classification:
Teams standings are calculated as follows:
* Conference Leaders (i.e. conference leaders will always be ranked in the top three)
* Log points
* Number of games won
* Overall points difference
* Number of tries scored
* Overall try difference
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