So with the 2026/27 term just around the corner, TRU takes a look at how the teams are shaping up ahead of the new campaign, starting with BUCS Super Rugby, which gets underway this Wednesday.
University of Bath
First up are double winners Bath, who created their own piece of history last season by lifting both the league title and BUCS Super Rugby Milk Championship.
With 78 points collected from a possible 90, a bundle of tries and plenty of entertainment, ‘The Brothers’ will be looking to replicate those efforts this time around.
"There’s obviously a big effort to do it again," Bath captain Will Keylock told TRU. "We know we can do it now. The consensus is to try and build on it again and go after the things we go after."
Now in his fourth year at Bath, Keylock has come all the way through from the freshers’ team in his first year to the first team, and is now a Bath Rugby scholar and the captain of the Blue and Gold.
His journey is one example of how the partnership between Bath Rugby and the University of Bath has helped develop the side into one of the league’s leading programmes.
"To get picked up by Bath Rugby - particularly me and Isaac Sprenger (lock) as we worked our way through Bath Uni - is so rewarding. I started off in the fresher’s team, he started off in the 3s and we just worked our way up year by year. Just showing how good the pathway is."
Keylock feels the key for his side will be building relationships and developing new “depth”, with front-row trio Max Pearce, Claudius Wheeler and Alfie Griffin all moving on.
"We want to improve our fitness, improve our physicality and be better skilled. First [goal] is the top four, which would be good. That continues to be a target and a realistic target that will keep us driven.
Pragmatic words from the Head of Rugby, but James knows the unpredictability of the league all too well.
First up, Bath face their title rivals from last season, with Loughborough travelling to ‘The Yard’ looking for revenge.
Loughborough University
For Loughborough, 2025/26 was a case of so close yet so far.
They effectively missed out on the league title after a late comeback defeat to Bath in Round 17, before Aaron James' side beat them comfortably 41-14 in the BSR Milk Championship final at Rodney Parade.
However, this is a Loughborough team that knows what it takes to achieve success, having won the league in 2022/23 and 2024/25 whilst also lifting the Milk Championship in 2024.
"The playing group is consistently changing year on year and for us as a programme to be consistently at the top end of BUCS Super Rugby is a testament to the quality of our programme.”
Webdale said that, despite a number of players moving on, his young side is “really hungry as a group”.
"They’re desperate [this season] for the opportunity to represent the shirt, for all the history and heritage that’s behind it, and put their stamp on it.”
So, even with key players such as Elliot Gourlay and Owain Evans moving on, Loughborough appear to have retained that desire to go again, with their eyes on making the play-offs and adding another chapter to the programme’s history.
“Our record speaks for itself over the last few years. It’s our job to follow that and for this group to write their own piece of history for themselves,” Webdale finished.
Brunel University
After their big clash at 'The Yard', Bath head to new boys Brunel University in Round Two.
For Brunel, it was fourth time lucky in the play-offs. Back in April, they travelled 285 miles north to Newcastle University where they won 29-25 to secure promotion to BSR.
Gareth Rise, Programme Director and Academy Manager for Ealing Trailfinders, with whom Brunel has a partnership, told TRU about the emotions behind their play-off victory.
"Just relief, really. Very proud of the guys, proud of the staff and the effort we put in last year."
Rise, who is at the heart of the Brunel-Ealing partnership, believes the collaboration has been “critical” to that success, both in terms of player development and on the pitch.
“With us, we see it as only logical to bring players to 21/22 and give them those longer years to develop in physicality, ability, and rugby IQ, guided by the club with the IQ of the coaching staff, and obviously the academy staff that are based at Brunel."
After losing two play-off finals and a semi-final, Rise believes those experiences will benefit Brunel as they enter their maiden BSR campaign.
"It certainly is only going to add to the hunger. BUCS Super Rugby is where we want to be as a set of players, staff, as a university and as an academy.
"So the hunger is there but also now is the reality that we are in a really strong league, and we are looking forward to competing with some of the top university sides in the country."
For captain Chris Johnson, it is his second year at Brunel University after leading his side to their play-off final triumph against Newcastle.
"We know it’s going to be a step up. It’s something we’ve prepared for, and we think mentally we should have been there for the last few years anyway. We finally get to prove ourselves.”
Johnson is also an alumnus of Cardiff Met, who Brunel travel to in Round One.
"It’s a great place," said Johnson, who represented The Archers between 2023-25.
"I’ve obviously never been on the receiving end of it [the Cardiff Met fans]. I've always had them cheering me as opposed to against me, but that’s what Uni rugby’s all about! That’s the big nights we all look forward to. We definitely won’t need any motivation to get up for that game, that’s for sure."
A big one up first for the BSR debutants, and one that will certainly test their top-flight credentials. Can they consolidate their position in the league this year?
Cardiff Met
For Cardiff Met, it is a new era, with former British & Irish Lion Dai Young taking over as head coach from Ian Gardener, who had been in post since 2017. Senior coach Danny Milton has also moved into a role with the WRU.
Three consecutive sixth-place finishes for the Archers is something they will be looking to improve on as well as pushing for a top four spot, after losing 27-25 in the quarter-finals to Exeter last season.
Young, who joined as Head of Performance last year, believes Met lacked the “levels” required to play the game needed to beat the “big boys”, as he explained to BUCS Super Rugby’s Joe Byrnes.
Young comes in with pedigree, having enjoyed successful coaching spells with professional sides Cardiff and Wasps.
"We need to be a consistent top-four team," he told BSR. "You can’t plan to win things but you can plan to be in the top four. Then after that, you’re into one-off knockout games which, as we all know, can go either way.”
Cardiff University
Across the city, rivals Cardiff head into the season after an eighth-place finish last time out.
They finished 2025/26 strongly to make the play-offs and nearly caused a huge upset against Championship winners Bath, taking a 27-0 lead before being pegged back in a 48-30 quarter-final defeat.
Head coach Chris Davies spoke of his team’s need to adapt as a smaller side in the league.
"I think at Cardiff, we’ve always tried to play our own way, to create our own DNA," he told BSR.
"I don’t think we’ve got the resources and size to go up against the powerhouses like Exeter and Loughborough so we try to move the ball around a little bit more. I think if we can coach that chaos type of style, then we can come out quite well if we get it right."
With Swansea going down, Cardiff will hope to steer clear of relegation after effectively condemning their Welsh rivals to the same fate in January.
With Hartpury up first and the famous 'Cardiff Clash' coming in Round Three, Davies is looking forward to a big start to the league season.
"The Hartpury one at the beginning of the season is a big challenge for us, and I guess we will see where both teams are at in that first match.
"The first couple [of matches] are interesting [Durham away in Round Two] and then the clash becomes that third or fourth game, which is nice as it gives us a couple of games to get into it, as opposed to it being in Round Two where it catches us cold sometimes."
With a seventh-place finish, Hartpury ended the league season strongly, winning four of their final five matches. With that finish and better preparations in pre-season this year, head coach Tim Stevenson believes his side will be stronger this time around.
"This year, preps gone well, we are ahead of the curve and we are excited for what this squad’s going to bring," he told BUCS Super Rugby.
"We’ve had a six-week head start this season. Last year we didn’t come in post till mid-August. We’ve now got a settled group of performance coaches and the playing pool is getting deeper. It’s exciting where these boys can go."
Hartpury would love to repeat those 2025 heroics with a more settled group, and Stevenson has his eyes on the final four of the Milk Championship.
"We want to be in the play-offs and competing in that final four come the end of the season."
Durham University
Another side with Milk Championship ambitions are Durham, who have real pedigree in the competition, having won the league in 2020 and 2022.
Like many sides, Durham are facing a big turnover of players after their fifth-place league finish and semi-final Championship appearance last year.
Marcus Rhodes and Louis Inman, among others, will be big misses after moves to Champ Rugby. They will, however, be boosted by continuity in the backline, with Will Windows, Louie Platt and Rory Telfer all staying on.
If they can replace the physicality lost in the pack, their backline should help ease the team’s problems.
It’s a northern derby up first, with a trip to Leeds Beckett before Cardiff University visit Hollow Drift - perhaps an opportunity to start the season well against two teams that finished towards the lower end of last season’s table.
In terms of ambitions, Durham will look to push for another top-five league finish and compete in the Championship play-offs.
Leeds Beckett
It was a disappointing term for Beckett in the 2025/26. A ninth-place finish meant they missed out on the play-offs.
"We’ve got a bunch of hard workers. We’ve got players that have been in our system for a bit, but not many of them have had opportunities to play first-team BUCS Super Rugby. They will get those opportunities this year.
"Definitely we’re going to be throwing it around. I think we’ll probably have to play a bit more up-tempo game with the personnel we’ve got."
Wood said his side want to be “tough to beat”, and they will need to be.
With just relegated Swansea below them last season, the jeopardy will be there for them to avoid the same fate.
Two home games to start the campaign will help, with Durham and Exeter both coming to Headingley Campus. A scalp or two there would ease any early concerns.
Exeter University
When you talk about high tempo and throwing it around, Exeter certainly come to mind.
The Devon outfit boast a strong pedigree, winning back-to-back titles in 2022 and 2023 and three league crowns in total. They finished third last year before an all-time semi-final against Loughborough ended in a 58-48 defeat.
Head coach Gareth Elliott has his eyes on a push for a home semi-final position, meaning a top-four finish, at least, is on their radar.
"We clearly scored enough points in that game [the Loughborough semi-final] and other games," Elliott told BSR.
"You’ve got to make sure that especially in the early game in that semi-final where it was transition, they came to life and we just missed a jump on a couple of plays.
"So I think through pre-season and heading into the early parts of the season, we’ve got to be really on it from our defensive structures and our physicality around that side of the game so we can kind of get hold of games."
Retaining players such as Ollie Batson, Ben Smith and Morgan Crew will be important, with the trio announced in the recent England Under-20 Elite Player Squad.
With centre Nick Lilley also still an option for Exeter, when TRU spoke to him exclusively in June, he highlighted team integration as a key theme going into the season.
The question is, have they been able to do that?
Losing the likes of Tom Gulley and Ben Coen will be a miss, but the conveyor belt of talent appears to be strong, and the team should be in a position to compete at the top end of the table.
A trip to Highfields to face Nottingham is up first in a tough opening-round fixture.
University of Nottingham
Nottingham finished fourth last season - their highest-ever BUCS Super Rugby league position.
Despite missing out in a 35-21 defeat to Durham in the Championship quarter-finals, it was a season of optimism for the side, with them also winning the Celestial BUCS 7s tournament.
"I think we just had a high level of cohesion. We had a group of guys there - Harry Simpson, Max Blinkhorn, Ryan Sweeting, Alex Garrett - that have played for three years together. That’s gold dust to a coach.
"Any coach will tell you that if you’ve got high cohesion, then you’ve got the possibility and opportunity to go out there and play well."
With three of those players - Blinkhorn, Simpson and Garrett - confirmed to be moving on to Champ Rugby, rebuilding that cohesion will be the goal for Westgate and his side. It will be difficult to repeat last season’s finish if they cannot.
He cited home form as a key area for improvement from last season, with the aim of making Highfields a “fortress” again.
Westgate seems pragmatic about the challenge ahead, and wants to build into the season.
"Success is not linear. You don’t just keep getting better and better. Our speed to be cohesive as a team, our speed to learn, our speed to manage changes, our speed to be up for it physically, emotionally, technically and tactically is going to be so, so important.
"It would be awesome to be in the semi-final. Absolutely. But first and foremost, we’ve got to get up to speed, start playing good rugby, enjoyable rugby, fast rugby, and see where it takes us."
It all kicks off on Wednesday.
Season 11. More eyes. More drama.
Leeds and Durham get us underway on Wednesday at 2pm in West Yorkshire.
Adam Predicts...
League Table: 1. Loughborough University | 2. University of Bath | 3. Exeter University | 4. Hartpury University | 5. Cardiff Met | 6. University of Nottingham | 7. Durham University | 8. Cardiff University | 9. Brunel University | 10. Leeds Beckett
BUCS Super Rugby Championship winners: University of Bath
