Rank

The European Professional Club Rugby Power Rankings assess all the performances in all matches in both the Heineken Champions Cup and the European Rugby Challenge Cup to classify all the teams in one ranking based on their performances during the current season.

Several criteria – domestic qualification (seeding), match result (including an away victory weighting), tries and bonus points awarded – are used to determine the algorithm that is being used to determine the actual rankings.

All matches in the group stage are ranked according to the seeding criteria that is used to determine the pool draws in both competitions. The ranking is then updated for the knockout phase to reflect the seeding obtained from the final rankings in the pool stage. However, if during the knockout phase, a lower-seeded team defeats a higher-seeded team, then the winners take the ranking of the higher-seeded team for the subsequent stage. For all matches, this criteria is used to determine the weighting of each fixture.

The outcome of each individual match – in terms of points won, tries scored, bonus points awarded (both for tries scored and margin of defeat being seven points or under), together with an away win bonus – is then assessed to determine a match value that is then combined with the fixture weighting to provide the eventual algorithm for each team.

In addition, subsequent to the first round, when only one data set is available, the result of the most recent match is combined with a percentage of the results from previous rounds to give the overall current ranking (that takes into account all matches played in the current season).