Matches played 35 | Teams 16 | |
Date November 2009 - March 2010 Attendance 278,978 (7,971 per match) |
The 2009–10 LV Cup (styled as the LV= Cup) was the 39th season of England's national rugby union cup competition, and the fifth to follow the recently adopted Anglo-Welsh format.
Contents
Northampton Saints were crowned champions after beating Gloucester in the final at Worcester's Sixways Stadium.
The structure of the competition has been altered from previous years. The competition will continue to consist of the four Welsh Magners League teams and the twelve Guinness Premiership clubs arranged into pools consisting of three English and one Welsh team. However, the new format will see teams guaranteed two home and two away pool matches, with teams in Pools 1 and 4 playing each other and teams in Pools 2 and 3 playing each other. The competition is set to take place on international fixture dates during the Autumn Internationals and Six Nations, thus allowing teams to develop their squad players.
On 29 October 2009, little more than a week before the start of this season's competition, British insurer LV was unveiled as the new sponsor. The deal runs through the 2010–11 season.
Points system
The points scoring system for the pool stages will be as follows:
The ranking criteria were:
Qualification criteria
The top teams from each pool qualify for the knockout stages. The pool winners will be decided by the following criteria:
1. The pool winner will be the club with the highest number of match points in each pool. The pool winners will be ranked 1 to 4 by reference to the number of match points earned in the pools.2. If two or more clubs in the same pool end the pool stage equal on match points, then the order in which they have finished will be determined by:Each of the four qualifying clubs shall be ranked as above and shall play each other as follows:
Semi-final 1 - 1st ranked club v 4th ranked clubSemi-final 2 - 2nd ranked club v 3rd ranked clubThe first club listed in each of the semi-final matches shall be the home club.