After meeting on 29 March, Russian rugby officials have finalized details for a revamped Championship of Russia. The new format, replacing the Professional Rugby League, will see the top tier’s size increase from eight to fourteen teams.

The Championship will be played in two phases; the first phase will see teams compete on a home-and-away basis in regional groups, the second will see the top-three finishers each from east and west progress to Superleague, where they will again play home-and-away fixtures. From here, four clubs, the best from each pool, will progress to the semifinals and ultimately the finals. Play in the initial round will begin 12 May and run through 2 July.

During the first stage, participants will be grouped according to geography, solving a problem of travel that plagued the predecessor league. Competitors range from Taganrog, a seaport on the Sea of Azov, an arm of the Black Sea, all the way to Chita, a regional university town close to the Mongolian border in eastern Siberia! Penza return to top-flight rugby after recovering from a financial crisis in 2006 that nearly forced the club to fold, as do Soviet-era powers Taganrog. Four of six teams in the eastern pool come from rugby hotbed Krasnoyarsk, including upstarts RK Siberia.

The pools are:

West Pool:
- Group 1: VVA-Podmoskovye1 (Monino, Moscow region); Fili Moscow; RK Taganrog; RK Maryina Roshcha (Moscow)
- Group 2: Slava Moscow; RK Penza; Spartak Moscow; RK Zelenograd (Moscow)

East Pool:
Krasny Yar (Krasnoyarsk); Enisei-STM2 (Krasnoyarsk); Universitet Chita; RK Novokuznetsk; RK Siberia (Krasnoyarsk); Siberian Federal University (Krasnoyarsk)

12007 champions
22007 runners-up

The venue for the eastern semifinal has been confirmed as Krasnoyarsk.

Another intriguing development sure to enliven Russian domestic rugby in 2008 is speculation that VVA-Podmoskovye will be invited to play in the European Challenge Cup from next season. They would become the first club from Russia to compete in European competition.

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