The initiative came from the clubs that rely on bar takings to improve their finances.
The number of supporters coming to clubrooms declines when the premier competition ends.
A special meeting of club delegates was called and there was unanimous support for the changes.
"There will be two full rounds next year and this will be followed by a semifinal and final," the chairman of the Dunedin Metropolitan Committee Maurice Hughes said yesterday.
There will be up to 20 games for each club.
There will be nine games in each round and this will be followed by the semifinal and final.
The winner of the first round of nine games will win the Speight's Cup.
Points will be carried over to the nine-round Gallaway Trophy and the four top teams will then play in the semifinals and final for the Speight's championship.
This year, the club final was held in July 17 to enable representative players to play in the club in semifinals and finals.
Two rounds of games will be played at Easter - on Thursday April 21 and Monday April 25 (Anzac Day).
The World Cup will be played in New Zealand next year and the ITM Cup will start in early July.
This means that representative players will not be available for the final crucial rounds of club rugby.
The University Club will be the most affected because it has more players of representative standard than other premier teams.
"I can understand why it will happen next year because of the World Cup," the coach of the champion University A team John Leslie said.
In 2008 and 2009, the University club won the Gallaway Trophy but then lost its Otago players for the key play-off games.
Leslie hopes that the issue will be addressed before the 2012 club season because he is adamant that having the representative players involved in club rugby improves the standard.
Otago coach Phil Mooney preferred to have his representative players involved in meaningful club rugby than in meaningless pre-season warm-up games with the provincial side.
"Representative players kept playing club rugby this year but you can't blame Otago's poor performances on that," Leslie said.
"There is no correlation."