Sport Rugby union Country Russia Number of teams 10 | No. of teams 10 Most recent
champion(s) Yenisey-STM Date founded 2005 | |
 | ||
Teams Krasny Yar Krasnoyarsk, RC Novokuznetsk, Fili Moscow, Slava Moscow, Imperia-Dynamo Penza, Spartak GM Moscow | ||
Professional Rugby League (Russian: Профессиональная регбийная лига) is the premier rugby union competition in Russia. The Professional League was formed in 2005 and succeeds the Superleague. The Superleague, in turn, was active from 1992 to 2004 and succeeded the Soviet Championship.
Contents
Each club plays each opponent twice; four points are awarded for a win, two for a draw, and no points are given for a defeat. A similar points system is used by most of the club competitions. The top four clubs proceed to the play-offs (first introduced in 2006).
History
The founding of the league coincided with a period of rapid change for Russian rugby, and the format has differed nearly every season since 2005.
In 2007, Yug-Krasnodar were admitted to the competition, increasing the league's size to eight teams. For 2008 several lower division clubs were admitted, with a total of 14 teams split into three conferences based on geography. Many of elevated clubs were semiprofessional or even amateur in nature, which lead a lack of competitive balance. The average attendance that season was 4285.
2010 saw another change of format. Gone was the East-West divide, culminating in the formation of a 'Super Group'. VVA Monino, Krasny Yar, Yenisey-STM, Slava Moscow, RC Novokuznetsk and Imperia-Dynamo are joined by Fili Moscow and Spartak GM in a straight home-and-away league format. The Rugby Union of Russia were reluctant to make any changes in 2011, a World Cup year.