2014 Super Rugby season


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, 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.
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Competition format

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:Internal Conference Matches – Each team plays the other four teams in the same conference twice, home and away.Cross Conference Matches – Each team plays four teams of the other two conferences away, and four teams of the other two conferences home, thus missing out on two teams. Each team plays two home and two away games against teams from each of the other countries, making a total of eight cross conference games for each team. There will be a three-week international break between rounds 15 and 16 of the regular season.
The top team of each conference, plus the next top three teams in table points regardless of conference, 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 Southern Kings was abolished following a meeting on 13 February 2014.

Standings

Conference leaders and wildcard teams qualified to the finals. 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 will host the sixth-placed team in the qualifiers, while the fourth-placed team will host the fifth-placed team. The top two teams 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, Log points, Number of games won, Overall points difference, Number of tries scored, Overall try difference
Key:

Fixtures

The following fixtures were released 7 October 2013.

Round 8

Round 16

Players

Player statistics

The following table contain points which have been scored in competitive games in the 2014 Super Rugby season.

Squad lists

The teams released the following squad lists:

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Backs:

Rebels">Melbourne Rebels">Rebels


Referees

The following refereeing panel was appointed by SANZAR for the 2014 Super Rugby season:
Prior to Round 7, Jason Jaftha, James Leckie, Francisco Pastrana and Lourens van der Merwe were removed from the refereeing panel, Jaftha due to an anterior cruciate ligament injury that would see him miss four months of the season and the latter three in a move by SANZAR to recognise "who has performed to expectation and who has not."