The 2011 Super Rugby season will kick off in February 2011 with pre-season matches held from mid-January. It will finish in early July to allow players a recovery period for the 2011 Rugby World Cup to be held in September and October; in future non-World Cup years, the competition will extend into August. The 2011 season will be the first season of the expanded Super Rugby format, also introducing the Melbourne Rebels from Australia after entry by the Southern Kings from South Africa were denied. The Southern Kings, could however replace one of South Africa's previous teams, the Lions could be the unlucky team as they ended up bottom of the log in the last Super 14 season. The schedule, which covers 21 weeks, will feature a total of 125 matches. Starting with three groups of five teams, these groups will be the Australian Conference, New Zealand Conference and the South African Conference. With the new format, the regular season will consist of two types of matches :
Internal Conference Matches - Each team will play the other four teams in the same conference twice, home and away. (See table below for conferences)
Cross Conference Matches - Each team will play four teams of the other two conferences away, and four teams of the other two conferences home, thus missing out on two teams (one from each of the other conferences).
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.[1][2] The top two conference winners, based on table points, receive first-round byes. In the first round of the finals, the third conference winner will be the #3 seed and will host the wild card team with the worst record, and the best wild card team will host the second-best wild card team. In the semi-finals, the #2 conference winner will host the higher surviving seed from the first round, and the #1 conference winner will host the other first-round winner. The final will be hosted by the top remaining seed.[3]