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The Russian Rugby Championship, officially known as the Pari - Russian Rugby Championship for sponsorship reasons (Russian: Пари - Чемпионат России по регби), is Russia's top level professional men's rugby union competition. The Russian Rugby Championship is run by Russian Rugby Union and is contested by 10 teams as of the 2019-2020 season.

History

The founding of the league coincided with a period of rapid change for Russian rugby. The first Russian rugby championship, which succeeded the Soviet Rugby Championship, was played in 1992, under the name Russian Superleague. The league kept this name until 2004, when the competition was then rebranded as the Rugby Premier League.

In 2007, Yug-Krasnodar were admitted to the competition, increasing the number of teams in the league to eight.

Just one year later, in 2008, a further six teams from several of the lower division competitions were admitted into the Rugby Premier League. This increased the total number of teams again, to fourteen teams. The fourteen teams were split into three conferences, based on geography, in that season. One thing to note was that many of the elevated clubs geographically were semi-professional or even amateur in nature, which lead to a lack of competitive balance.

2010 saw another change of format to the Rugby Premier League where the East-West divide was removed, culminating in the formation of a 'Super Group'. This meant that VVA-Podmoskovye Monino, Krasny Yar, Enisey-STM, Slava Moscow, RC Novokuznetsk and Imperia-Dynamo as well as Fili Moscow and Spartak GM were scheduled to play each other in a straight home-and-away league format.

Current Teams

Current Teams

Note: Flags indicate national union as has been defined under WR eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-WR nationality

Team	Manager	Captain	Stadium	Capacity
Enisei-STM	Aleksandr Pervukhin	Uldis Saulīte	Avangard Stadium Central Stadium	2,463 15,000
Krasny Yar	Igor Nikolaychuk	Victor Arkhip	Krasny Yar Stadium Central Stadium	3,600 15,000
Slava	Levan Tsabadze	Denis Antonov	Slava Stadium	1,300
VVA	Nikolay Nerush	German Davydov	Gagarin Air Force Academy Stadium	1,500
Metallurg	Vyacheslav Shalunov	Anton Sychev	Metallurg Stadium	10,000
Lokomotiv	Aleksandr Yanyushkin	Sergey Yanyushkin	Pervomaysky Stadium	5,182
Strela	JP Nel	Magomed Davudov	Tulpar Stadium Central Stadium	3,275 25,400
Dinamo	Rianne van Straten	Aleksandr Zorin	Slava Stadium	1,300
Khimik	John Molvihill		Khimik Stadium	5,266

Champions

Winners by year

See also

• Rugby union in Russia

External links

• Official website (in Russian)
• Russian rugby statistics (in Russian)

• Professional Rugby League
• Sports leagues established in 2005
• 2005 establishments in Russia
• Rugby union leagues in Europe
• National rugby union premier leagues
• Sports leagues in Russia
• Professional sports leagues in Russia