Americas Rugby News Rugby news from across the Americas!
South America’s professional rugby competition will begin in 2020. The Súper Liga Sudamericana will be a multinational professional league to give South America regional professional rugby for the first time.
The league is to be launched at the end of this month in Montevideo. The launch is to take place on Friday, November 29 confirming that the Súper Liga Americana will begin in February 2020.
The Súper Liga will be played from February to May. This is part of producing a global season within the Americas. It will see the competition taking place at the same time as Major League Rugby (MLR) and the Americas Rugby Championship (ARC) moving to August and September.
The new time frame for the ARC will require rethinking from Argentina due to it clashing with both the Currie Cup and the Rugby Championship. It will therefore attend to the UAR’s desire of having more opportunities for more athletes.
The competitors in the Súper Liga Americana will be confirmed together with the match schedule on November 29. The announcement is reported to be a seven team competition though it is not yet clear that this to in fact be the number.
The launch will clarify precisely how many teams there are going to be and what are to be their identities and locations. If it is confirmed as being a league of seven teams then they are understood as being two in Brazil, and two in Uruguay, and one in each of Argentina, Chile, and Paraguay.
The Argentine side is expected to be a rebranded form of the Jaguares XV. It is understood to be taking on a name of its own and that the team will be based in Argentina’s second largest city, Córdoba.
Uruguay’s two teams are both expected to be based in Montevideo. They are the soccer clubs of Nacional and Peñarol. Brazil’s two rumored sides have been penciled in as being a team based in São Paulo and another in Florianópolis.
The Chilean and Paraguayan sides are to be based in the respective national capitals of Santiago and Asunción. Additional teams from both as well as from Argentina, and Colombia are being pondered for future seasons.
