The Currie Cup Qualifier tournament has been replaced with the SuperSport Rugby Challenge for the 2017 season.
The Qualifier event, which attracted virtually no interest from SA rugby fans, had in turn replaced the Vodacom Cup, which was scrapped at the end of the 2015 season.
The rebranded tournament will feature Sunday rugby, triple-headers and regional championships.
It will kick off on the weekend of 22/23 April and feature the country’s 14 provincial unions together with Namibia’s Welwitschias in a 13-week tournament.
Professional rugby will also make a starring appearance at well-known community rugby centres for televised rugby festivals. Venues such as the Wolfson Stadium in Port Elizabeth, Bill Jardine Stadium in Johannesburg, and the venue of last year’s club rugby Gold Cup final, Impala Rugby Club in Rustenburg, will host matches.
As part of the new look, the SuperSport Rugby Challenge will SuperStack matches with as many as three games hosted back-to-back at a single venue – one of which will be a local club rugby match.
The competition will also be divided into three regions – north, south and central – with local bragging rights up for grabs.
The tournament will comprise six-pool matches every weekend for 10 weeks, followed by seven knockout games. The 15 teams are divided into three geographical pools, with each playing home and away against the other four teams in their pool over the 10-week period.
The top two teams from each pool, together with the two third-placed teams with the most log points, will qualify for the quarter-finals, which take place on Sunday, 2 July, followed by the semi-finals a week later and the final on Sunday, 16 July.
The SuperSport Rugby Challenge will be officially launched at Bill Jardine Stadium on Tuesday, 11 April when the full details and other innovations will be revealed.
SuperSport Rugby Challenge pools:
North: Blue Bulls, Golden Lions, Falcons, Pumas, Welwitschias
Central: Free State Cheetahs, Griffons, Griquas, Leopards, Sharks XV
South: Boland Cavaliers, Border Bulldogs, EP Kings, SWD Eagles, Western Province
