2022 Super Rugby Pacific season
The 2022 Super Rugby Pacific season (known as Harvey Norman Super Rugby Pacific in Australia and DHL Super Rugby Pacific in New Zealand) is the 27th season of Super Rugby, an annual rugby union competition organised by SANZAAR between teams from Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, Samoa and Tonga. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the previous seasons were replaced with Super Rugby Unlocked, Super Rugby Aotearoa and Super Rugby AU in 2020, and Super Rugby Aotearoa, Super Rugby AU, and Super Rugby Trans-Tasman in 2021. The 2022 edition will revert to a 12-team competition , with a single pool replacing the geographical conference system, as well as introducing a new name for the reformatted competition. The season is expected to run from 18 February, with the final to be played on 18 June - culminating before the start of the mid-year international window. With the exclusion or withdrawal of the Argentine , the Japanese , and the South African , , and sides at the conclusion of the 2020 Super Rugby season, three new teams were announced to make up the 12 team tournament. The Fiji Rugby Union's domestic team, the , having previously competed in the Australian National  Rugby Championship from 2017 to 2019, were announced as one addition to the competition. The newly created franchise, representing players from Samoa and Tonga and other Pacific Islands, also successfully put forth a bid to join the competition. The also returned to Super Rugby, following their exclusion at the end of the 2017 Super Rugby season and following on from their inclusion in Super Rugby AU and Super Rugby Trans-Tasman in both 2020 and 2021. The competition was again affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, with the competitions fixtures being revised in December 2021, due to border restriction in New  Zealand. Then in January, the announced their Round 1 and Round 4 home matches would be swapped to away matches, due to border restrictions in Western Australia. In February, it was announced that the New Zealand sides (and ) would enter a bio-bubble in Queenstown, New Zealand due to the threat of COVID-19 with all NZ-based matches being played at or . Despite this, it was announced that the Round 1 match between and the would be postponed due to COVID-19 cases within the Moana Pasifika squad. Competition format. The 12 participating teams will not be divided into geographical conferences , instead playing 14 regular season games: the 12 teams facing each other once in a home-and-away format for 11 games, and the remaining 3 games to be played with an emphasis on derby matches; with the Fijian Drua likely to be associated with the Australian sides and Moana Pasifika with the New Zealand sides, given they will be based there. It is likely that the Drua and Moana Pasifika will also develop a rivalry, both being Pacific Island teams. The top eight teams at the conclusion of the regular season qualify for the play-offs. For the quarterfinals , the first-ranked team play the eighth-ranked team, the second-ranked team play the seventh-ranked, the third-ranked play the sixth-ranked and the fourth-ranked team play the fifth-ranked. The Quarterfinal winners to the Semifinal, and the winners of the semifinals to the final. The higher ranked team will host each playoff match. Standings. Round-by-round. The table below shows each team's progression throughout the season. For each round, their cumulative points total is shown with the overall log position in brackets: Matches. The fixtures for the 2022 Super Rugby Pacific competition were released  on 15 November 2021. On 23 December 2021, a revised draw was announced due to complications surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. Finals. The finals fixtures are as follows: Players. Squads. The following squads have been named. Players listed in "italics" denote non-original squad members: Referees. The following referees were selected to officiate the 2022 Super Rugby Pacific season: