2015 Super Rugby season
| 2015 Super Rugby season | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Countries | Australia New Zealand South Africa |
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| Tournament format(s) | Round-robin and knockout | ||
| Champions | Highlanders (1st title) | ||
| Matches played | 125 | ||
| Tries scored | 633 (5.06 per match) | ||
| Top point scorer(s) | Lima Sopoaga (191) | ||
| Top try scorer(s) | Waisake Naholo (13) | ||
| Official website | Official site | ||
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The 2015 Super Rugby season was the 20th season of Super Rugby and the fifth season featuring an expanded 15-team format. For sponsorship reasons, this competition was known as Asteron Life Super Rugby in Australia, Investec Super Rugby in New Zealand and Vodacom Super Rugby in South Africa. The round-robin matches took place every weekend from 13 February until 13 June, followed by the finals series and culminating in the final on 4 July. This was the final season that featured a 15-team format.
Covering 21 weeks, the schedule featured a total of 125 matches. The 15 teams were grouped geographically, labelled the Australian Conference, New Zealand Conference and the South African Conference. The regular season consisted 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), moved on to the finals. The top two conference winners, based on table points, received byes in the qualifier round. In the qualifier round, the third conference winner was the number three seed and hosted the wild card team with the worst record, and the best wild card team hosted the second-best wild card team. In the semi-finals, the number two conference winner hosted the higher surviving seed from the first round, and the number one conference winner hosted the other first-round winner. The final was hosted by the top remaining seed.
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The top six teams qualified 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) hosted the sixth-placed team in the qualifiers, while the fourth-placed team hosted the fifth-placed team. The top two teams (i.e. the two conference winners with the best overall record) qualified directly to the semi-finals, where they had 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 progressed 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 were 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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