Super Rugby Pacific Fantasy: Rules and Boosters explained

The long-awaited start of the Super Rugby Pacific Fantasy game is nearly here, but fans will have to wait another couple of days before the game is fully released.

Super Rugby Pacific announced last year that a ‘Fantasy’ game would be introduced for the 2025 season, following in the footsteps of other popular sporting competitions with accompanying Fantasy games, such as the NRL, NBA, NFL, and the English Premier League.

Fantasy is a virtual competition where you can create a team to play in leagues against your friends, family, colleagues or an open league created by anyone around the world.

It’s the first official Super Rugby Fantasy competition, putting fans’ knowledge to the test.

Super Rugby Pacific CEO Jack Mesley says that the competition won’t be hosted on an app.

“Just through the website at the moment but it links through all of our different channels,” Mesley told the New Zealand Herald.

You begin by creating a team, filled with players from different Super Rugby teams, that receive points based on specific performance categories.

Super Rugby Pacific announced that you will be able to select a team of 15 players, with a maximum of four players from one franchise. You will have a budget of $100m, to spend on players that all have a different price, depending on the quality of the player.

Super Rugby Pacific announced that there is an option to auto-fill your team if you don’t want to manually select your team.

“You can add players to your team by pressing the + icon next to any available player on the player pool. You can remove players from your team by pressing the “Remove” button located on the player profile, which can be opened by clicking or tapping on a player,” a statement from the Super Rugby Pacific’s website explained.

“If you don’t want to manually select your first team, you have the option to autofill your team. This will auto-populate any empty positions within your team using your remaining budget allowance.”

Your 15-man squad will be made up of players in these positional categories.

• Props – two players
• Hookers – one player
• Locks – two players
• Loose forwards – three players (any combination of flankers and number eights)
• Scrumhalf – one player
• Flyhalf – one player
• Midfield – two players
• Back three – three players (any combination of fullbacks or wingers)

Transfers

The 2025 Super Rugby Pacific Fantasy game will allow you to make unlimited transfers throughout the season, letting you change your 15-man team as many times as you want.

Despite being able to make unlimited transfers, you can only transfer a player in or out of your team that hasn’t played yet.

“You will not be able to transfer in or out a player that is locked until the current round is complete, and the next round becomes active. If a player has been listed as injured, they will have this cross symbol next to their name. Please refer to the Key on the My Team page.”

Super Rugby Fantasy has decided to use a rolling lockout service meaning that when a team plays, the players in that squad will become locked until the end of the current round.

“When a player is locked, that player is confirmed in your team for the upcoming round, and their points will contribute to your team’s scoring. Once a player becomes locked in the current round you can no longer make a transfer or apply a booster to them until the round concludes and lockout is lifted.”

Boosters

Like other Fantasy games, there are added “boosters” for each team to use at some point during the season.

Each squad will have a Triple captain, Co-captain and Limitless boosters in their arsenal for whenever they choose to use them.

You can only use each booster once throughout the season and can’t be used on the same week as another booster.

Limitless

For one week/round only, you will have an unlimited budget to select your 15-man squad.

Co-Captains

For one week/round only, you can choose two captains that score you double points rather than only one.

Triple Captain

Your chosen captain will get you triple points for one round, instead of the normal amount for a captain (double).

Here are the specific performance scoring categories:

Playing 1-60 minutes: 1 point

Playing 61+ minutes: 2 points

For each try: 15 points

For each try assist: 9 points

For each conversion: 2 points

For each missed conversion: -1 point

For each penalty goal: 3 point

For each missed penalty: -1 point

For each drop goal: 3 point

For each missed drop goal: -1 point

Yellow Card: -5 points

Red Card: -10 points

For each turnover forced: 4 points

For each interception: 5 points

For each lineout won on own throw: 1 point

For each lineout steal on the opponent throw: 5 points

For each lineout error (includes handling error, not straight or lost outright): -2 points

For each tackle made: 1 point

For each tackle missed: -1 point

For each defender beaten: 2 points

For each offload: 2 points

For each line break: 7 points

For each line break assist: 5 points

For every 10 metres gained: 1 point

For each penalty conceded: -1 point

For each error (knock on or forward pass): -1 point

For scrum won outright (awarded to entire front row): 3 points