Super Rugby franchises, with the competition being rebranded as the URC. The league split into four regionally based pools—one each for Ireland, South Africa, and Wales, plus a joint Italian–Scottish pool. While the top team of each pool at the end of the regular season will receive a trophy branded as a regional "Shield" and automatic qualification for the following season's European Rugby Champions Cup, all teams are combined into a single table for purposes of playoff qualification. The top eight teams advance to knockout playoffs, with the higher seed hosting all matches leading up to the championship final, which continues to be held at a predetermined site. New Zealand Both domestic competitions in New Zealand rugby — the semi-professional National Provincial Championship (known by several sponsored names) and the nominally amateur Heartland Championship — use a playoff system to determine their champions, although the term "playoff" is also not used in New Zealand, with "finals" used instead. National Provincial Championship In the 2006 Air New Zealand Cup, the first season of the revamped domestic structure in that country, the top six teams after Round One of the competition automatically qualified for the finals, officially known as Round Three. Their relative seeding was determined by their standings at the end of the Top Six phase of Round Two. The teams that finished below the top six entered repechage pools in Round Two, with the winner of each pool taking up one of the final two finals slots. The seventh seed was the repechage winner with the better record, and the eighth seed was the other repechage winner. From 2007 onward, the former Rounds One and Two were collapsed into a single pool phase of play in which all teams participated. In 2007 and 2008, the top eight teams advanced to the playoffs; in what was intended to be the final season of the Air New Zealand Cup format in 2009, the Shaughnessy format was used, with the top four advancing to the finals. The New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRU) ultimately decided to stay with the previous format for the rebranded 2010 ITM Cup, with the same four-team playoff as in 2009. Starting in 2011, the NZRU split the ITM Cup into two seven-team leagues, the top-level Premiership and second-level Championship, and instituted promotion and relegation in the ITM Cup (a feature of the country's former National Provincial Championship). The competition