The last edition of NARDB’s Player Movement Summary series was an ‘NPC Special’ with 8 of the 9 moves from mid-July involving players heading down to New Zealand for the 50th year of the National Provincial Rugby competition. The NPC has long been a competition of choice for MLR teams to recruit from and although the numbers of NPC players in MLR fell in 2026 after the league shifted to a more domestic focus, there was still a lot of movement between the two competitions. Now that the NPC has started and the squads are known, there’s been a lull in terms of player moves, but that’s not to say that there was no movement!
Welcome back to NARDB’s Player Movement Summary covering the three weeks from 20th July to August 9th, 2026! The aim of this series is to keep fans informed of all the players entering Major League Rugby, heading overseas after playing here in 2026, or moving to a new team within MLR, so that there are no surprises when the 2027 campaign kicks off. As always, the summary graphic is right here:
Departures – NPC
The first few moves covered in this edition of NARDB’s Player Movement articles involves the final few players joining NPC squads, as a number of teams revealed their squads closer to the 30th July start date. On 21st July, the Wellington Lions revealed their full squad for the 2026 campaign, which included MLR veteran and newly crowned Champion Jake Turnbull for his first season in the competition after nine years of Major League Rugby!
Born and raised in Australia, Turnbull moved to Denver, CO in 2015 and played with the Glendale Raptors before they professionalized and joined MLR. He represented the Denver Stampede in the short-lived PRO Rugby competition in 2016 before returning to Australia to earn a Bachelor’s Degree in Sports Business, Sport and Exercise from the Australian College of Physical Education. When Major League Rugby came along, Turnbull signed with the Houston SaberCats ahead of the inaugural season in 2018, and has played in every season of competition to date!
Turnbull is one of only 2 players in MLR history (with Sean McNulty) to have represented six different franchises. He earned 20 appearances (6 starts) with Houston between 2018-2019, then joined Old Glory DC for the truncated 2020 season but appeared in all 5 games (3 starts) before joining the Austin Gilgronis for 2 seasons between 2021-2022, starting 12 of his 26 games including 7 of his 14 appearances in 2022 where he scored a career high 5 tries. Following the disqualification of the Gilgronis in 2022, Turnbull headed to Seattle for the 2023 season, earning a career high 18 appearances (6 starts) in the PNW. For 2024, the Seawolves traded Turnbull to the newly formed Anthem RC in Charlotte, captaining the team for their first season where he earned a career high 13 starts in 14 games. Over 2 seasons with the Rising Stars, Turnbull started 23 of his 28 games, appearing in all but 4 matches for Anthem during that time. Moving into his 9th season in 2026, Turnbull joined the Chicago Hounds for their dominant Championship season, starting 2 of his 6 games during the shorter season, including his 100th MLR appearance in Round 9, a big victory over the Seattle Seawolves. He appeared in both of the Hounds’ playoff matches en route to lifting the Shield after a perfect 12-0 season in Chicago.
Jake Turnbull is just the 7th player in MLR history to reach 100 games played in the competition, now sitting on 103 games in total, starting 52 times and scoring 14 tries on over 1,900m gained in possession and 730 tackles completed. Strong numbers from a prop. Internationally, Turnbull is a test capped USA Eagle, earning his debut as Eagle #562 in September 2023 again Spain, he has earned 14 caps for the USA to date, with the latest coming in November 2024, also against Spain. Best of luck in New Zealand, Jake!
From Wellington on the south side of New Zealand’s North Island to Albany, the home of North Harbour on the north side (surprise surprise). On 22nd July, North Harbour revealed their own 2026 squad which included MLR’s Top Scorer from the 2026 season, Coby Miln!
Born in New Zealand, Miln has spent a significant portion of his playing career overseas, representing the Munakata Sanix Blues in Japan, Randwick and Warringah in the Shute Shield competition in Australia, and the Western Force in Super Rugby, also based in Australia. As many MLR fans know however, most recently he was marshaling the California Legion as their go-to fly-half in 2026. He started all 10 regular season games for the Legion this year, scoring 95pts to help them qualify for the playoffs in their first season post San Diego/LA merger with a 5-5 record in 3rd. Miln added a massive 35pts in just two postseason games that included a 23pt haul in their Semifinal victory over the Seattle Seawolves on the road which marked a new MLR record for the most points scored by a single player in a playoff game.
Miln added another 12pts in the Championship Game, but the Legion fell to an utterly dominant Chicago Hounds side. With 130pts in total in just 12 games and a success rate from the tee of almost 86%, he was named to the All-MLR Second XV in his debut season in North America, and now heads back to his native New Zealand for his first season in the National Provincial Championship where he will join MLR alumni Jed Melvin (New England Free Jacks 2024-25) and Oscar Koller (Anthem RC 2024). Best of luck, Coby!
Departures – Rest of World
Heading briefly away from New Zealand to the UK. On 24th July English club Ampthill RUFC announced that they had signed California Legion back row Ed Timpson for their 2026/27 CHAMP Rugby season. Born and raised in the UK, Timpson played rugby with the University of Nottingham before heading to Sydney after his graduation where he joined the Norths in the Shute Shield for a year before returning to the UK and playing in the Premiership Rugby Cup with the Bristol Bears in 2024/25.
Ed Timpson headed stateside ahead of the 2025 MLR season, signing with Rugby FC LA where he started 13 of his 15 appearances under Stephen Hoiles, scoring an impressive 7 tries on over 350m gained and recording 164 tackles made to earn the RFCLA Forward of the Year title for the 2025 season. Timpson remained in California following the merging of RFCLA with the San Diego Legion and represented the new look California Legion during the 2026 season. He appeared in 9 of the team’s 10 regular season games, starting 8 times and scoring a pair of tries to help the team finish 3rd with a 5-5 record and qualify for the playoffs in their first season. Timpson started both Legion games in the postseason, helping the team defeat the Seattle Seawolves on the road to advance to the Championship Game where he scored a 3rd try of the season as the Legion fell to the utterly dominant Chicago Hounds.
Timpson finished his 2026 season in North America as a MLR runner-up, earning a pair of Team of the Week selections as well as All-MLR honours when he was named to the All-MLR Honourable Mention XV. He gained more ground than any other forward in MLR last season and beat more defenders than any other player in the League, dispatching 62 of them on 516m gained (20 more defenders beaten than the next highest player) while still averaging over 11 tackles per game for a total of 125 on the season, also in the Top 10 league wide. Timpson is no stranger to the English 2nd tier, having played with Cambridge at the start of the 2025/26 season, but now returns for a full season with Ampthill. Congratulations, Ed!
Timpson wasn’t the only move to England announced over the last few weeks. On 5th August, the Bristol Bears announced that New England Free Jacks scrum-half Oscar Lennon was returning to the club for the 2026/27 PREM Rugby season. The US-eligible Welshman first joined Bristol in 2022, and has since split his time between the Bears and Hartpury in the Championship (England’s 2nd tier) as well as playing 3 seasons with the Free Jacks in New England between 2024-2026.
A 2x MLR Champion, Lennon earned 32 appearances with the Free Jacks across 3 seasons, including a high of 17 in 2025. Heading into 2026 his career high in starts was 5 but he doubled that this year, starting all 10 games for New England. He scored a career high 5 tries in those 10 games, 2nd only to Sione Tupou in terms of tries scored for the Free Jacks, and recorded over 50 tackles and 200m+ gained in possession. These numbers are remarkably similar to his totals from 2025, but achieve in 7 fewer games played. In total, Lennon scored 8 tries and 58pts across his 32 games with New England, starting 19 times and helping them to two Shields in 2024 & 2025. He started the 2024 MLR Championship game, and came off the bench in the 2025 Championship.
Lennon has earned 15 appearances for the Bears to date as well as almost 30 with Hartpury. His seemingly permanent move back to Ashton Gate rules him out for the vast majority of the 2027 MLR season, but the wording of the Free Jacks’ press release seems to suggest that he won’t be returning for a 4th season in New England next year. Very best of luck with the Bears, Oscar!
On August 3rd, a couple of days before Bristol’s announcement, Hong Kong based club Kowloon RFC announced that 2025 MLR Draftee Charlie Walsh was joining the club for the 2026/27 HKRFU Premiership season. The son of two Americans, Walsh is a Hongkonger born and raised in Clearwater Bay where he began playing rugby at the age of 8. He went to high school in New Zealand and developed in the Waikato system, playing with their U18 side before heading to the US for college, enrolling at UC – Berkeley.
Charlie Walsh played rugby with the Golden Bears throughout his time in California between 2020-2025, Captaining the side to a D1A title in his final year, their first D1A National XV title since 2011. He declared for the 2025 MLR Draft following his graduation and was selected in the 2nd round, 11th overall by the Seattle Seawolves and was included on the full Seawolves MLR roster when it was released in early March 2026. Walsh earned his MLR debut that season, appearing as a reserve in 5 of Seattle’s regular season games to help the team finish the season in 2nd with a 6-4 record, before being named in the replacements for their Semifinal clash with the California Legion, although he was ultimately not used in that defeat.
As mentioned already, Walsh is a born and raised Hongkonger. The Hong Kong national team have already expressed interest in the 24yo prop in the run up to their Rugby World Cup debut in 2027, so it’s likely that Walsh is returning home with his eyes on representing Hong Kong on the biggest stage. Very best of luck, Charlie!
Hounds Heading to Hamilton
On 21st July, Waikato announced their squad for the 2026 NPC season. Included in this squad were a few names familiar to MLR fans, such as 2x Shield winning New England Free Jacks Captain Mitch Jacobson or Utah Warriors playmaker D’Angelo Leuila, but no players from the 2026 season. Or so we thought. A few weeks later on 4th August 2026, the Chicago Hounds announced a high-performance partnership with the Hamilton-based NPC team, ‘with the intent to share resources, intellectual property, and give players development opportunities’.
As a part of this partnership three homegrown players from the Shield winning 2026 Chicago Hounds squad are heading to New Zealand to spend 3 months training with the NPC side: Koby Baker, Jackson Zabierek, and Jake Kinneeveauk. A native of North Carolina, prop Koby Baker is the only one of these three that wasn’t selected in the MLR Draft. Picking up rugby in high school, he went to Cardiff Met University in Wales before heading to Australia, then back to the USA to join the American Raptors for the 2024 Super Rugby Americas season. Following the SRA campaign Baker joined the Seattle Seawolves for the latter half of that year’s MLR season where he earned 5 appearances off the bench including all 3 playoff games that Seattle played as they fell to the New England Free Jacks in the 2024 Championship Game. Following the 2024 MLR season Baker headed to Chicago to play with the Hounds Academy side in the fall, and has stayed with Chicago ever since. He earned a pair of appearances during the 2025 MLR season before an impressive fall campaign earned him a full MLR contract for 2026 where he earned a career high 6 appearances as the Hounds dominated the regular season.
Both Kinneeveauk and Zabierek are 2nd Round MLR Draftees. Californian hooker Zabierek was selected 18th overall out of the University of Santa Cruz by the Seattle Seawolves in 2023, and played alongside Koby Baker during the 2024 season, earning 1 start in 6 games. Similar to Baker, he then headed to Chicago and has played with the Hounds for the last two seasons, scoring 2 tries in as many starts and earning a further 22 MLR appearances for the Hounds. Alaskan back row Jake Kinneeveauk was selected a year after Zabierek, 22nd overall out of the University of Utah. He earned his MLR debut as a reserve which was his only MLR action during the 2025 season, but had a breakout year in 2026. Named as the 2026 Chicago Hounds Breakthrough Player of the Year, Kinneeveauk scored 3 tries in 9 games last season, starting 4 times including both of the Hounds’ playoff games, with one of his tries coming against Old Glory DC in the Semifinal.
All three Hounds ended the MLR season as newly crowned Champions and now have an amazing opportunity to continue to develop with Waikato for the 2026 NPC Season. It will be interesting to see both how these three young American players do in New Zealand, as well as how the Chicago Hounds’ new partnership with Waikato develops. Could we see some Waikato players heading to the Windy City for 2027?
Wrapping Up
After two quiet weeks following New Zealand’s final National Provincial Championship sides announcing their squads, the first week of August saw a spike in player movement from Major League Rugby, with two Brits heading back across the pond, a Hongkonger heading home with Rugby World Cup aspirations, and the Chicago Hounds’ new High Performance Partnership sees a trio of homegrown champions head to New Zealand!
Even though August gives MLR fans plenty to talk about with the Collegiate Draft scheduled for the end of the month, it’s the quietest part of the year in terms of player movement. As a result, these articles will be somewhat irregular for a while until the volume picks up. The last Player Movement article covered a fortnight, this edition covers three weeks, and it’s likely that we won’t see any moves into MLR until after the draft. Regardless, NARDB will try and keep fans up to date on all Player Movement when as and when signings are announced. Player-by-player posts can be found on our socials.
Thank you very much for giving this article a read and if you enjoyed it, please share it around so that other fans can stay informed of all the player movement around MLR so far! If there are any moves that were missed, please let us know by tagging us on social media or sending them our way directly. James and NARDB can be found on social media here: @MLRStats on Instagram, JamDelay & @NARugbyDB on Twitter/X, and @JamDelay & @NARDB on Bluesky! Alternatively, you can reach out to NARDB via the ‘Contact’ tab on this site.
Finally, if you’re looking to pick up some new rugby gear be sure to visit rugbynow.com and use code ‘MLRSTATS’ at checkout for 15% off of your order!