We’re now two weeks into pre-season camps and eagle-eyed Major League Rugby fans are scouring the teams’ social media posts to catch a glimpse of unannounced players prepping for the 2025 MLR season, which kicks off in under 4 weeks! This series of articles will add detail to every player announcement from the previous week, and this particular article will cover the movement between January 13th and January 19th, 2025.
As with the last few weeks, Player Announcements have really slowed down now that the season is fast approaching and players have already reported to their teams. We will start, as usual, with the summary graphic but as you will see, there were only a handful of announcements. Thankfully, the Seattle Seawolves revealed their complete 2025 roster, which this article will also cover and point out some important inclusions or omissions. Let’s dive in with the graphic:
Re-Signings
Having announced the vast majority of their roster way back in November, the San Diego Legion added another returnee when they confirmed the return of capped USA Eagle Tevita Tameilau for his 6th season in California and 7th in MLR in 2025. Tameilau has proved himself a ferocious ball carrier, gaining over 500m for the last four seasons in a row, including a career high of 1,065m gained in 2022. Tameilau passed 3,000m gained in his career in 2024, and is within touching distance of 500 tackles. He scored his 10th MLR try in 2024 and brought his total appearances up to 70 (53 starts).
The rest of last week’s re-signings were from the Utah Warriors, also in the Western Conference. The Warriors announced a trio of returnees for their 2025 campaign. The Warriors will have Tuvere Vugakoto back for a 6th season at Zion’s Bank. The Fijian hooker has 8 tries in 50 MLR games for Utah since 2020, starting 29 times and amassing over 850m gained and 283 tackles completed. Also returning to the forward pack is 2024 Utah Warriors Pathway Player of the Year Kalisi Moli. Moli started 4 of his 12 appearances during his debut MLR season in 2024, completing 67 tackles and running for 169m gained. Moving to the back line, Canadian U20 scrumhalf Sam Reimer is back for a 3rd MLR season, and 2nd with the Warriors. Reimer played with the Toronto Arrows in 2022 before spending a year in New Zealand, and joining the Utah Warriors ahead of the 2024 season. He has 7 MLR appearances in his career to date and will be looking for his first start in 2025.
New Faces and Confirmed Rosters
Last week saw just the one new addition for 2025, and it was for the Utah Warriors, who were responsible for 4 of the 5 player announcements from last week. The Warriors announced the signing of New Zealand winger Blake Makiri for the 2025 season. The 22yo Auckland native joins from Counties Manukau in New Zealand’s National Provincial Championship (NPC), where he’s been playing since 2022.
After a busy first few months of the off-season, the Seattle Seawolves had been relatively quiet for the last few months. However, last week they revealed their complete roster for their 2025 campaign, generating some interesting questions.
First off, there was some confusion among fans about what criteria they actually used to determine the flags beside each name. Having the nationality of players is an excellent addition, but there are some strange decisions from the Seawolves. For example, the Union Jack is used beside Huw Taylor’s name. Taylor is British, born in England with strong ties to Wales, but the Union Jack was not used for Dave Busby, who is Northern Irish…which is a part of the United Kingdom. Additionally, neither Northern Ireland or the United Kingdom are rugby nations. Northern Irish players play for Ireland alongside players from the Republic of Ireland, and the rest of the UK compete as England, Scotland, and Wales. It is possible that this was the preferrence of each player, but it is an odd choice for rugby. This graphic also mislead a lot of fans who claimed that the Seawolves squad only had a small amount of domestic players (from the US or Canada), but that is not the case. Riekert Hattingh and JP Smith both had just the South African flag beside their names, but are capped USA Eagles, for example. Ina Futi and Pago Haini are from American Samoa, which does have it’s own rugby team but they play sporadically. American Samoans are also US-eligible as the islands are a US territory. Toni Pulu has two flags beside his name, why couldn’t other players? Some fans thought the flag choice might be country of birth, but Canadian Dewald Kotze was born in South Africa, and Toni Pulu was actually born in the US, also making him a domestic player. As mentioned, the flags beside player names is a great addition, but in this case it’s confusing and misleading.
Now, let’s dig into the meat of the roster: The Players. It is excellent to see MLR Great Riekert Hattingh back in the lineup after injury curtailed his 2024 season. He can now resume the try-scoring competition with Chicago’s Dylan Fawsitt, and will likely become just the 2nd player in league history to reach 50 tries scored (currently on 42). The same applies to the likes of Devin Short and Charles Elton, who were also badly hit with injury last season, the return of these three to the Seawolves backline is a fearsome slight. Also on the roster is Calvin Liulamaga, who was selected 11th overall by the Seawolves in the 2024 MLR Collegiate Draft out of Central Washington University. Liulamaga is the only one of Seattle’s four 2024 draftees to be included on their 2025 roster.
Moving to the omissions, mentioned just above weas the fact that three of the Seattle Seawolves’ draftees did not make their MLR roster. It’s possible they are playing in the area and we may see them if injuries happen, however. Some big omissions include 2022 Shield Winner Kara Pryor, who missed most of 2024 with injury, and fellow ex-Ironworker Monate Akuei, who made an impact in the back half of the 2024 season. Neither Pryor or Akuei qualify as domestic players yet. On the subject of international players, the Seawolves have a completely new flyhalf pairing in 2025 with the additions of ex-NOLA Gold 10 Rodney Iona, and South African Eddie Fouché. This means that Mack Mason, who finished with 2 tries and 172pts in 2024 will not be returning, neither will all-time MLR points leader Sam Windsor, who added 3 tries and 42pts to take his total to an enormous 595pts. This will be the first MLR season without the great Sam Windsor. Also not returning for Seattle are the likes of USA Eagles Tavita Lopeti (San Diego Legion) and Conner Mooneyham (Anthem RC), as well as MLR veterans Olive Kilifi and Kellen Gordon, and rugby veteran Tevita Kuridrani to name just a few. A full roster review of the Seattle Seawolves, and all MLR teams, will be posted to social media prior to the 2025 season kicking off in February.
In Conclusion
A quieter week around MLR in terms of player moves, because the vast majority of rosters are set and ready for kick off on February 15th. We finally heard a peep out of Anthem RC in regards to their roster, and are expecting that to be revealed on Tuesday, January 21st. This is the third week of pre-season camp and is far far too late for a roster reveal, but it is better than nothing. As for individual players, we may see the odd announcement here and there, but this will probably be only about half a dozen players from now until the season begins.
As always, you can follow NARDB and James across social media to stay up to date on signings as they happen. @MLRStats on Instagram/Threads, @JamDelay & @NARugbyDB on Twitter/X, and @JamDelay and @NARDB on Bluesky! Also, we’re happy to have Rugby Now back for the 2025 season! Visit shopmlr.com to get your hands on that new Macron gear for 2025, and remember to use code ‘MLRSTATS’ at checkout for 15% off your order!