Category: Midweek Milestones

Midweek Milestones: Standout Stats from Rd 10 of the 2026 MLR Season!

James Deeley

The penultimate weekend of the 2026 Major League Rugby regular season is behind us, and with just 1 weekend of games left before the postseason begins, three of the four playoff spots have been decided but only one of them is locked in. The California Legion and Seattle Seawolves are still fighting over the final home playoff spot in 2nd, while the three teams at the bottom of the standings are fighting for survival, with the defending champion New England Free Jacks, Old Glory DC, and Anthem RC (mathematically, at least) all battling it out for the last remaining place!

Welcome back to Midweek Milestones, the weekly article series that dives deeper into some of the standout stats from the latest round of MLR action! Round 10 gave us another 3 cracking games including arguably the game of the season so far between Old Glory DC and the Chicago Hounds and as regular readers of these articles will know, every MLR gameday throws out a bunch of interesting numbers, standout stats, and Midweek Milestones!

Appearance Achievements

Round 10 saw a MLR collegiate draftee earn his 50th appearance in the competition, becoming the 6th Collegiate Draftee to reach a half-century of appearances, and just the 2nd from his draft class in 2022. Selected 1st Overall in the 2022 MLR Collegiate Draft by the Dallas Jackals out of UC Berkeley, Sam Golla has been exceptional since starting his pro rugby career. He started all 16 appearances for the Jackals during his rookie season, scoring 3 tries and gaining over 500m while completing a massive 218 tackles, averaging 13.6 tackles per game. Unsurprisingly, this earned him the 2023 MLR Rookie of the Year award, becoming the first 1st Overall Draft Pick to win the award. Following this superb first year of pro rugby, Golla earned his test debut for the USA as Eagle #558 against Romania in August 2023.

Golla represented the Jackals for two seasons between 2023-2024, scoring 6 tries in 26 games (25 starts) and completing well over 300 tackles before the team withdrew from the competition. Following this, the Texas born, Colorado raised Golla headed to North Carolina to join Anthem RC with former Jackals head coach Agustin Cavalieri, where he’s played for the last two seasons. He added another strong defensive season in 2025 (187 tackles made in 15 games) and remains a constant in the Rising Stars lineup this season, appearing in all 9 games so far. In his 50 game MLR career so far, Golla has started 47 times and notched 8 tries on over 1,100m gained (impressive for a forward), and has completed a huge 584 tackles in total with over 100 in each of his last three seasons, but a slight drop this year (67 in 9 games). Golla follows Canadian Cali Martinez as the 2nd member of the 2022 MLR Draft Class to reach 50 appearances in the competition. Congratulations, Sam!

Before the 2026 season, only 4 players had ever reached 100 appearances in Major League Rugby. Despite being a shortened season this year, that number has doubled! Luke White, Riekert Hattingh, and Jake Turnbull have all joined MLR’s exclusive ‘100 club’ and in Round 10, they were joined by California Legion forward, Keni Nasoqeqe!

Born and raised in Fiji, Nasoqeqe grew up playing rugby for Lelean Memorial School in Nausori near the capital of Suva, before moving to the United States in 2015 and settling in California. He promptly joined Belmont Shore RFC in Long Beach, helping them to a Pacific Rugby Premiership title in 2018, before turning professional and joining the San Diego Legion ahead of the 2019 MLR season. Nasoqeqe started 12 of his 13 games for the Legion that season, scoring 2 tries and completing 138 tackles (still his career high) to help the team finish as MLR Runners-Up that season. He would represent the San Diego Legion for 3 seasons between 2019-2021, starting 22 of his 28 appearances and scoring 5 tries in total with over 1,000m gained in possession.

Ahead of the 2022 MLR season, Keni Nasoqeqe moved from the west coast to Texas, joining the Houston SaberCats. After struggling through the first few years in the competition, the SaberCats went through a period of rebuild ahead of the 2022 season, bringing in former Springboks head coach Heyneke Meyer and veteran South African coach Pote Human to take the reigns. This transformation wasn’t limited to the front office, with plenty of new players arriving from around the league and beyond, including Keni Nasoqeqe. It was with the Houston SaberCats that he earned the bulk of his 100 appearances in MLR. Nasoqeqe played with Houston for 4 seasons between 2022-2025, posting positive records and qualifying for the post-season every year. In total, Nasoqeqe earned 63 appearances for the SaberCats, appearing in 17 games in 3 different seasons including 2025, when the SaberCats posted an impressive 14-2 record and advanced to the MLR Championship Game where they fell to the New England Free Jacks.

With the unexpected withdrawal of the SaberCats from MLR following the 2025 season, Keni Nasoqeqe returned to California to rejoin the new look California Legion. He’s started 5 of his 9 games for the Legion so far this season to reach triple figures! In terms of career totals, Nasoqeqe has started 59 of his 100 appearances including a high of 14 for Houston in 2022, scoring 10 tries in total. He sits just shy of 700 tackles made and has over 1,850m gained in possession. Congratulations on your 100th appearances, Keni!

Carty sets single season record!

With 6pts for Anthem RC from 3 successful conversions in the Rising Stars defeat to the California Legion at the weekend, Irish born USA Eagle Luke Carty moves to 53pts on the season, setting a new Anthem single season record for points in a season! Carty is just the second Anthem player ever to score over 50pts in a season, and overtakes Cliven Loubser’s 51pts in 2024 to set the new benchmark. Loubser is currently Anthem RC’s all-time top scorer with 57pts scored for the team, but Carty now sits just 4pts behind him with 1 regular season game left this season. Can he take the top spot?

Scoring points is nothing new for Luke Carty. He passed 250pts scored earlier this season and currently sits as MLR’s 12th highest scorer with 279pts scored in 64 games, putting him 4th among active players. This season, Carty is 25/34 from the tee across his 8 games played for a success rate of 73.53%, far higher than his career average of 68.82% (117/170). He has only scored 1 MLR try so far, which came back in 2024 while playing for the Chicago Hounds.

Scoring Stats

On the subject of scoring points, Luke Carty wasn’t the only player with a standout scoring stat in Round 10. In Seattle, a gutsy win over the Free Jacks was secured by a Divan Rossouw score that took the Seawolves just out of reach for the defending champions, securing a playoff berth for the 4x finalists and keeping their hunt for a home playoff game alive.

This was the 17th MLR try for capped Namibian international Rossouw which, when added to his 3 penalties and 3 conversions he scored while filling in as Seattle Seawolves place kicker during their injury ravaged start to 2026, takes his points total over the 100pt mark, to 102! Rossouw is averaging 0.4 tries per game across his 44 appearances for Seattle, and is the 7th player in Seawolves history to pass 100pts scored for the team. Congratulations, Divan!

Moving down the west coast from Seattle to California and the Legion, who were in fact playing Anthem all the way across the country in North Carolina. The Legion secured their spot in the 2026 playoffs in style, with an eight-try, 26-55 victory over the Rising Stars. Three of these scores came from USA eligible Welshman Steff Crimp, recording the first hat trick of his MLR career and doubling his career try total from 3 to 6!

Now on a career high 4 tries in 7 games (4 starts) so far this season, Crimp’s hatty is the first in California Legion history, and only the second hat trick of the 2026 season after Brock Webster for the Chicago Hounds in Round 5. This is the 55th hat trick in Major League Rugby history! Congratulations, Steff!

Player Milestones

The Seattle Seawolves completed the season sweep of the defending champion New England Free Jacks over the weekend, retaining the Coffee Cup with a surprisingly dominant victory (although the scoreline suggests otherwise thanks to a late surge from the Free Jacks). In this game, winger Ina Futi recorded the 2nd highest metres gained total for the Seawolves, with 55m gained which isn’t particularly remarkable in and of itself, however this pushes his career total over the 4,000m mark, becoming just the 16th player in MLR history to pass 4km made in possession!

A gridiron football player in his native American Samoa, Ina Futi moved to California in 2014 before moving to Idaho the following year and picking up rugby, before heading to Seattle in 2018 and joining Seattle RFC. The rugby club has served as a regular feeder team (and pre-season opponent) for the Seattle Seawolves over the years, and after excelling with the club, Futi was signed to a MLR deal ahead of the 2021 season and has represented the Seawolves ever since. His breakout season came in 2023 when he finished 2nd league-wide for metres gained with an extraordinary 1,495, scoring 9 tries and even completing 89 tackles out on the wing. These all remain career highs for Futi.

Averaging 57.8m gained per match across his 70 game MLR career so far, Futi is entering rarified air at the top of the Metre Eater leaderboard. He is currently sat 15th all-time for metres gained, while passing 4,500m would put him in the Top 8, alongside teammates Duncan Matthews and Riekert, who are both approaching metre milestones of their own, so watch this space. Congratulations, Ina!

Moving from metres gained to tackles made, and from the Seawolves to their Round 10 opponents, the New England Free Jacks. After signing with the Free Jacks from Old Glory DC in a high-profile move during the off-season, capped USA Eagle Jama Fa’anana-Schultz headed to France to join RC Narbonnais in the 3rd tier, Nationale. Narbonne qualified for the playoffs and eventually claimed the Nationale title and with it, promotion to the Pro D2. Excellent for Fa’anana-Schultz, although Narbonne’s success actually kept ‘JFS’ away from the Free Jacks for much of the season, finally linking up with the reigning champs and earning his Free Jacks debut in Round 9, and earning his first start this weekend in Round 10.

The long time Old Glory DC player and former Captain completed a team-high 17 tackles in round 10 to take his total to an even 700 tackles completed in his 72 game MLR career so far, averaging just under 10 tackles per game! Fa’anana-Schulz began his career with the Houston SaberCats in 2019 before joining DC for their inaugural season and playing with the Flags from 2020-2025, when he joined New England. Along with his 700 tackles that includes a high of 187 back in 2023, JFS has scored 16 tries on over 3,300m gained, setting his carer high of 4 tries in his final season in DC. Congratulations, Jama!

Not to take any of the shine off of Fa’anana-Schultz’s achievement, but he was not the only Free Jack to pass a big tackle milestone in this game. Captain Joe Johnston recorded slightly fewer tackles than JFS in this game at 14 (Johnston and Fa’anana-Schultz combined for just over 20% of all tackles made by the Free Jacks in this game!), but this took ‘The Mechanic’ career total over NINE HUNDRED, putting him in the Top 13 MLR tackles ever!

Johnston now sits at 901 tackles made in his 73 MLR games (60 starts) in total, all for the Free Jacks. The 3x Shield Winner is averaging 12.3 tackles across his career, but that season his average is an insane 16.8 tackles per game, passing 100 tackles in just his 6th game of the season. Congratulations, Joe!

Scorigami Check

Sticking with a newer segment that applies the concept of ‘Scorigami’ to Major League Rugby. ‘Scorigami’ is a method of tracking all final scores for a given league that originated in the NFL but has since grown in popularity and spread to other sports and leagues, with a ‘Scorigami’ being a score that has never occurred before. NARDB has applied the same method to MLR but does not take credit for starting this, as it has been present on the r/MLRugby subreddit for years.

The table below breaks down the three results from Round 10 of the 2026 Major League Rugby season, including how many times each score has occurred in the past and when, or if the final score is a MLR Scorigami that has never occurred before!

36 – 28 26 – 55 Old Glory DC 32 – 33
4th Occurrence2nd Occurrence2nd Occurrence
36 – 28 RFCLA
2025 – Rd 4		 55 – 26 NOLA rugby
2018 – Rd 5		 32 – 33
2024 – Rd 8
Old Glory DC 36 – 28
2023 – Rd 18
36 – 28 NOLA rugby
2022 – Rd 13
Note: MLR Scorigami only takes into account the final score, and does not (yet) go deeper into whether the home/away score configuration has also happened before. For example, the Seattle Seawolves defeated NOLA Gold 55-26 as the home side, but this is counted as the same score as when the California Legion defeated Anthem RC 26-55 as the away side.

Wrapping Up

For once, the Chicago Hounds didn’t break a crazy record! Instead, this week’s Midweek Milestones article covered appearance achievements for an MLR Draftee and a new Centurion, a new single season scoring record for the Rising Stars among other scoring achievements, and a bunch of player milestones for both tackles and metres gained! Three big games every week this year is throwing up a huge number of standout stats for us to break down, and I hope you enjoy them. Come back next week for all the juicy numbers from the final week of the 2026 Regular Season!

Thank you for reading this week’s edition of Midweek Milestones! Please feel free to let me know what you thought of this article (and the new addition of the Scorigami Summary) on social media, or let me know if you’ve found any standout stats that weren’t mentioned here!

You can find NARDB/James on social media here: @MLRStats on Instagram/Threads, 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 gear, visit rugbynow.com and use code ‘MLRSTATS’ at checkout for 15% off of your order!

Midweek Milestones: Standout Stats from Round 9 of the 2026 MLR Season!

James Deeley

Two games of the 2026 Major League Rugby season remain, and we are now less than a month away from the Shield being lifted at SeatGeek Stadium in Chicago on June 21st! As if every game of this shortened MLR season wasn’t important enough already, these final games are doubly so. Almost everything can change from week to week and has been doing so, with big scores not necessarily telling the whole story in what has been arguably one of the most competitive seasons of Major League Rugby to date so far. Like every week, these big scores in Round 8 threw out some fascinating numbers and milestones so let’s explore them!

Welcome back to Midweek Milestones, the weekly article for statsheads that dives deeper into some of the standout stats from the latest round of MLR action, picking out achievements, records, or just unusual milestones! Round 8 mixed the table up, and Week 9 has done exactly the same thing. Let’s jump in with the traditional Midweek Milestones start, the appearance achievements!

Appearance Achievements

Starting in the Chicago Hounds reserves for the first time this season, Australian tighthead prop Charlie Abel was called up early due to an injury to starting TH Wilton Rebolo. Abel came on just before the first hydration break for his 81st career Major League Rugby appearance but more importantly this marked his 50th appearance with the Chicago Hounds, becoming just the 3rd player in team history (and 3rd this season!) to reach a half-century of games with the team!

Melbourne native Charlie Abel first entered Major League Rugby with the LA Giltinis in 2021, helping the team to their first and only Shield title in their first season, recording highs in starts (14) and tackles (164) that remain his MLR career highs through 2026. Abel earned 31 appearances (22 starts) across 2 seasons for the Giltinis before their disqualification and subsequent withdrawal from MLR in 2022. From LA, Abel joined the Chicago Hounds for their inaugural season in 2023 and hasn’t looked back.

Of his 50 appearances as a Chicago Hounds, Abel has started 34 of them, scoring 7 of his 11 career tries including 3 so far this season, tying his career high set in 2022. Abel has recorded over 100 tackles in every season he’s featured in prior to 2026 (where the shortened season makes 100+ tackles much harder to achieve) and has just passed 1,500m gained in possession, averaging just shy of 20m per game over an 81 game MLR career which is particularly high for a front row. Abel earned his 50th appearance with the Hounds with his brother Robbie in attendance, who serves as an assistant coach with Chicago’s Round 9 opponents, the Seattle Seawolves. Congratulations, Charlie!

Coincidentally, Charlie Abel wasn’t the only Australian front row player for the Chicago Hounds with an Appearance Achievement in Round 9, this time on the loosehead side. Veteran Jake Turnbull was named to the Hounds’ starting XV this week to earn his 100th MLR appearance, becoming the 7th Centurion on league history, and the 3rd player to earn his 100th appearance as a Chicago Hound after Dylan Fawsitt (MLR’s first Centurion) and Luke White earlier this season.

Sydney native Jake Turnbull moved to the United States in 2015, and is one of very few remaining active MLR players to have featured in the short lived PRO Rugby competition in 2016, representing the Denver Stampede. When Major League Rugby was founded, Turnbull joined the Houston SaberCats and has played in every season of competition to date. Turnbull has already had an historic season in 2026. When he earned his Hounds debut in their 2026 opener against Anthem RC back in Round 2, Turnbull became just the 2nd player in MLR history to have represented six different teams in the competition, having played with Houston (2018-2019), Old Glory DC (2020), Austin Gilgronis (2021-2022), Seattle Seawolves (2023), Anthem RC (2024-2025), and now Chicago in 2026! Turnbull follows Sean McNulty in representing six different teams in the competition.

Turnbull was the 18th player in MLR history to reach 50 appearances in the competition and in his 100th appearance, Turnbull passed 700 career tackles made in his career, the highest among props in MLR history (with the exception of Luke White who has played all over the forward pack). Capped for the USA as Eagle #562, he has scored 14 tries including a high of 5 for the Austin Gilgronis in 2022, and has started 52 of his 100 games racking up just over 1,907m gained in possession, averaging around the same metres gained per game as Charlie Abel, just in 19 more appearances. Congratulations, Jake!

Finishing up the Appearance Achievements section of this week’s Midweek Milestones article we head to Old Glory DC, who have a new most capped player! Just a few weeks ago in Round 6, Fijian lock and USA Eagle #591 Tevita Naqali suffered a brutal arm injury that looked like it would end his season. However, just 3 weeks later he was on the bench for the Flags’ Round 9 clash with the California Legion in Sacramento. A member of Old Glory DC since their inaugural season in 2020, Naqali came off the bench in the 60th minute to earn his 77th MLR appearance for the Flags, passing Jack Iscaro’s 76 games to become the most capped player in team history!

Naqali has started 65 of his 77 appearances for Old Glory DC across his 7 seasons of competition in MLR so far, racking up just shy of 750 tackles in total and over 2600m gained in possession for averages of 33.8m gained and around 9.7 tackles per game over 7 years. Congratualtions, Tevita! With Jack Iscaro currently playing overseas in the Top 14 in France, the next most capped Old Glory DC player is tackle machine Cory Daniel, on 65 appearances for the team.

The Chicago Hounds

MLR’s league leaders remain undefeated, improving to an 8-0 record after completely demolishing the 2nd placed Seattle Seawolves at the weekend. With more and more of these articles becoming dominated by their achievements, there’s an argument to be made to rename Midweek Milestones to ‘What Record did Chicago Break this Week?’ but for now, we’ll just devote a section to them!

Their huge 57-17 home victory over the Seattle Seawolves marks the largest winning margin of the 2026 season so far, and sets a new franchise record as the largest Chicago Hounds winning margin ever at 40pts. This surpasses the previous record of 37pts set earlier this season against…The Seattle Seawolves. From having never beaten the Seawolves prior to this season, the Chicago Hounds have now swept Seattle with a combined score of 116-39, setting franchise record after franchise record in the process. I’m sure the Seawolves will be playing hard for that 2nd spot to at least guarantee they won’t be playing the Hounds in the Semi-finals!

With 57pts scored, the Chicago Hounds fell just short of their franchise record 61pts scored, set against Anthem RC a few weeks ago. They tallied the same amount of tries as in that game however, 9. The Hounds have now scored 9 tries 4 times in their history, and 3 times in 2026 alone!

One for the Purists

From a high-scoring run & gun game in the Chicago sun, to a low scoring ‘one for the purists’ in the East Coast rain. A floundering Anthem RC side hosted a struggling New England Free Jacks side with both teams hoping to keep their playoff hopes alive. The weather, handling errors, and numerous tries called back after review resulted in a game where points were hard to come by. The score was 7-12 entering the final 10 minutes before the Free Jacks sealed a much needed victory with a Joel Hodgson penalty and final minute score from Cam Gerlach on his Free Jacks debut took the score to 7-20.

This combined score of 27pts is by far the lowest scoring game of the 2026 season so far, with the previous ‘record’ being the 11-27 Seattle Seawolves over the New England Free Jacks back in Round 6. In fact, this is the lowest scoring game in Anthem RC history, surpassing (or failing to surpass?) the 32pts set in a 6-26 home loss to…The New England Free Jacks in Round 10 of the 2025 season. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme!

The Free Jacks now find themselves in a playoff spot, with the bottom 3 teams (including Anthem RC) separated by less than a bonus point victory entering the final two weeks of the regular season. Unfortunately for the reigning champs, they have one of the tougher remaining schedules, facing Seattle away and then Chicago. The Rising Stars are now on a 5 game skid (in a 10 game season…) and face the California Legion next week before what could be a playoff-deciding clash with Old Glory DC in the final round. The bottom of the table is where the action is this season, but here’s hoping we get a bit more scoring!

Tackle Milestones

As mentioned in the Appearance Achievements section, Jake Turnbull passed 700 career tackles on his 100th MLR appearance, But he wasn’t the only Chicago Hounds player to pass 700 career tackles in their big win over the Seawolves. Nathan ‘Moose’ den Hoedt completed 10 tackles to take his career total to 707! The Brisbane native is in his 7th season in the competition and 1st with the Chicago Hounds, and has averaged 8.7 tackles per game across his 81 game (77 start) MLR career, primarily as a lock. Den Hoedt has recorded 3 100+ tackle seasons, including a career high of 173 in his debut season with the LA Giltinis in 2021. Congratulations, Nathan!

Moving up the tackles leaderboard, Round 9 also gave us a new member of the 1,000 tackle club, the 3rd new addition this season! Prior to 2026, All-Time MLR Tackle Leader Lucas Rumball and MLR Legend Dylan Fawsitt were the only players with over 1,000 completed tackles but since the start of the season, they have been joined by Johan Momsen, Riekert Hattingh, and now USA Eagle #551 and Old Glory DC stalwart, Cory Daniel!

The wrestler-turned-back row is the 5th player in MLR history to pass 1,000 tackles made, and has been an absolute tackle machine since entering MLR in 2021. He’s finished as MLR’s top tackler twice, with 255 tackles in 2022 and a career high 276 tackles in 2024, also finishing 2nd in 2025 with 237 to wrap up his three 230+ tackle seasons. With 15 tackles made for the Flags in Round 9, Daniel has taken the 2026 lead with 125 tackles completed in just 8 games played, and passes 1,000 tackles in 65 MLR matches (60 starts), by far the fewest games to reach 1,000 tackles in MLR history. Not only is Cory Daniel a particularly prolific tackler, but he is remarkably consistent. His 125 tackles in 8 games this season averages out to 15.63 tackles per game which sits almost exactly in line (actually slightly above) his career average of 15.58 per game. Congratulations Cory, the fifth member of MLR’s 1,000 tackle club!

Scorigami Check

A relatively new segment that applied the concept of ‘Scorigami’ to Major League Rugby. Scorigami was coined by Jon Bois in 2014 as a method of tracking all final scores in the NFL and has since grown in popularity and spread to other sports leagues, with a ‘Scorigami’ being a score that has never occurred before. NARDB has applied the same method to MLR but does not take credit for starting this, as it has been present on the r/MLRugby subreddit for years.

The table below breaks down the three results from Round 8 of the 2026 Major League Rugby season, including how many times each score has occurred in the past and when, or if the final score is a MLR Scorigami that has never occurred before!

7 – 20 57 – 17 42 – 10 Old Glory DC
2nd Occurrence🚨 SCORIGAMI! ðŸš¨ðŸš¨ SCORIGAMI! ðŸš¨
7 – 20
2018 – RD 7
Note: MLR Scorigami only takes into account the final score, and does not (yet) go deeper into whether the home/away score configuration has also happened before.

Wrapping Up

Another new Major league Rugby Centurion, another member of the 1,000 tackle club, and another handful of records for the Chicago Hounds! Round 9 of the 2026 MLR Season has set up Round 10 to be make or break for many sides with playoff aspirations, while still giving us statsheads plenty to talk about for Midweek Milestones. Be sure to come back next week to root through all the obscure records and standout stats that Round 10 has to offer!

Thank you for reading this week’s edition of Midweek Milestones! Please feel free to let me know what you thought of this article (and the new addition of the Scorigami Summary) on social media, or let me know if you’ve found any standout stats that weren’t mentioned here!

You can find NARDB/James on social media here: @MLRStats on Instagram/Threads, 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 gear, visit rugbynow.com and use code ‘MLRSTATS’ at checkout for 15% off of your order!

Midweek Milestones: Standout Stats from Round 8 of the 2026 MLR Season!

NARDatabase

James Deeley

There’s just under a third of the regular season still to play but we’re rapidly approaching the business end of the 2026 Major League Rugby season, and the first team has already locked in their place in the postseason! Other teams are still a week or two away from their clinching scenarios, but Round 8 definitely shook up the standings, and produced some standout stats in the process!

Welcome back to Midweek Milestones, the weekly article that dives into the numbers from the latest round of MLR action and pulls out the extreme, the unusual, and the standout stats! As already mentioned, Round 8 of the 2026 season really mixed the table up, and threw out some interesting numbers in the process, as usual! Let’s jump into the traditional Midweek Milestones start, with an appearance achievement!

Appearance Achievements

There’s one appearance achievement this week, and for the 2nd week in a row it belongs to an Old Glory DC player! Talismanic fly-half Jason Robertson earned his 48th start in his 50th appearance for the Flags in their nail-biting victory over their rivals the New England Free Jacks to record their 4th straight win in the Red, White and Blue bowl. That matchup is almost guaranteed to produce a close, entertaining game, but the Flags just know how to come out on the right side of it. On this occassion, it was thanks to a Man of the Match performance from Robertson in his 50th MLR game!

The New Zealander joined Old Glory DC ahead of their inaugural season in 2020, starting all 5 games before the season was cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the point the season was paused, Robertson had scored 2 tries and a huge 67pts in his 5 games, leading the entire league. He returned for the 2021 season with the Flags and continued to score at an impressive rate, recording 108pts in 14 games that season to finish 3rd league-wide, and gaining over 900m in possession. He had recorded 175pts scored in just 19 games for DC between 2020-21, averaging 9pts per game!

Following the 2021 MLR campaign, Robertson headed to France to join RC Narbonnais in the Pro D2 before joining Aviron Bayonnaise in the Top 14, once of the best professional rugby leagues in the world. After 3 years in France, Robertson returned to MLR and Old Glory DC ahead of the 2024 campaign and he picked up right where he left off, with a career high 138pts in 17 games (15 starts) including his first postseason appearance. Not only was this a career high in points, but it remains the Old Glory DC single-season record for points scored! Robertson was named to the All-MLR Honorable Mention XV for his efforts in his return.

‘Robocop’ has spent his entire MLR career with Old Glory DC, and has been a standout in each of the 5 seasons in which he has competed. He earned 2 team of the week selections in 7 games in 2025 before suffering a Lisfranc injury that sidelined him for a year, but now he’s back on the pitch and doesn’t seem to have lost a step at all! In his now 50 game MLR career, Jason Robertson has racked up 9 tries and 429pts scored for Old Glory DC, still hovering around that 9ppg average and making him MLR’s 3rd highest scorer of all time with a 70.62% success rate from the tee (125/177). Congratulations on earning your 50th MLR cap, Jason!

Hounds make it 7 in a row!

It seems like every week so far this season, the Chicago Hounds set or break a new record. Whether it be a franchise record for points scored, a huge performance from one of their players, or being the first team to secure their spot in the 2026 MLR Playoffs. The Hounds have been dominant so far this season, and have to record to back it up, sitting 7-0 and fourteen points ahead of the 2nd placed Seattle Seawolves!

The California Legion gave them their biggest test of the year so far last weekend, leading 19-12 at the half to mark the first time this year that the Hounds have trailed after 40 minutes, and the first time that they have not claimed the try bonus point in the first half. Chicago came out firing in the second half however, and after 20 minutes of great defence from the Legion, the dam burst and the Hounds ran away with a 26-36 road victory to sweep the regular season series against the California Legion.

This 7th consecutive victory sets a new franchise best win streak for the Chicago Hounds, surpassing the previous record of 6 achieved from Rounds 3-9 of the 2025 season. It also matches their longest possession of The Old Mate at 6 games (from their previous victory over the California Legion in Round 3, to this win in Round 8), also achieved during the same run last year. Congratulations yet again, Chicago!

Player Milestones

Like most weeks, Round 8 saw a handful of players reach some highly impressive individual milestones that absolutely deserve recognition, which is exactly the purpose of this article, so let’s get started with some tackle machines!

As mentioned above, the California Legion gave the Chicago Hounds their toughest test of the season in Round 8 and although they came up short, there still something for Legion fans to cheer about. MLR veteran and 2021 Champion Billy Meakes was one of only 2 Legion players to record double digit tackles made in that game, recording 12 completed tackles just behind Ed Timpson’s 14 completions. These 12 tackles took Meakes’ career total past 750 tackles made in total, becoming the 21st player in league history to pass that milestone, and just the 3rd back!

Already a member of the 5,000m gained club (sat 4th all-time on 5,622), Billy Meakes is now sat on 752 tackles made across his 79 game MLR career. This works out as 9.5 tackles per game as a centre! Meakes has recorded over 130 tackles completed for in 4 of his 5 seasons prior to 2026 (falling just short with 92 in his debut 2021 season), including back to back seasons with over 150 tackles in 2022-23. Meakes is currently above his average with 62 tackles in 6 games so far and while it may be a push, another 100+ tackle season isn’t quite off the table yet. Congratulations, Billy!

Moving a little further up the table from Billy Meakes at 750 tackles and across the country from Sacramento to DC, where Old Glory Captain and USA Eagle Ben Bonasso led from the front in his teams fourth straight victory over the defending champs, as mentioned earlier. Bonasso was one of the highest tackles on the Flags, recording 15 completed tackles to take his career total over 900 tackles completed! The Connecticut born, Buenos Aires raised back row moves up to 908 total tackles completed across his 75 game MLR career, starting 67 times and averaging 12.1 tackles per game.

Bonasso is currently tied for 5th player league-wide on 96 tackles for the 2026 season so far, and will likely pass 100 to record the 5th 100+ tackle season of his career which includes 4 seasons with 160+ tackles made, and a career high of 199 (so close!) for the New York Ironworkers back in their Shield winning season in 2022. Congratulations, Benja!

MLR ‘Scorigami’ for Round 8!

For those of you that follow this site on socials, you may have noticed that NARDB has been posting ‘Scorigami’ updates after each round this season. Scorigami was coined by Jon Bois in 2014 as a method of tracking all final scores in the NFL and has since grown in popularity and spread to other sports leagues, with a ‘Scorigami’ being a score that has never occurred before. NARDB has applied the same method to Major League Rugby but does not take credit for starting this, as I believe it began on the r/MLRugby subreddit.

The table below breaks down the three results from Round 8 of the 2026 Major League Rugby season, including how many times each score has occurred in the past and when, or if the final score is a MLR Scorigami!

26 – 36 57 – 21 Old Glory DC 24-23
2nd Occurrence🚨 SCORIGAMI! 🚨3rd Occurrence
26 – 36
2023 – RD 13		 23 – 24
2024 – RD 12
NOLA rugby 23 – 24
2022 – RD 3
Note: MLR Scorigami only takes into account the final score, and does not (yet) go deeper into whether the home/away score configuration has also happened before. For example, Old Glory DC defeated New England 24-23 as the home side, but this is counted as the same score as when New England defeated the San Diego Legion 23-24 as the away side.

Wrapping Up

The first playoff spot has been claimed thanks to a franchise-best win streak, one of MLR’s all-time top scorers reaches a half-century of appearances as his team sweep their rivals for the 2nd year running, and some big tackle milestones!

Thank you for reading this week’s edition of Midweek Milestones! Hopefully I will see you next week, when we find out what sort of Midweek Milestones a high-stakes Round 9 will give us!. Please feel free to let me know what you thought of this article (and the new addition of the Scorigami Summary) on social media, or if you’ve found a milestone that I may have missed!

You can find NARDB/James on social media here: @MLRStats on Instagram/Threads, 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 gear, visit rugbynow.com and use code ‘MLRSTATS’ at checkout for 15% off of your order!



Midweek Milestones: Standout Stats from Round 7 of the 2026 MLR Season!

NARDatabase

James Deeley

The second half of the 2026 Major League Rugby season is underway and every try, every bonus point, and every win is absolutely vital! Every team now has 4 games remaining, but 6 teams into 4 playoff spots doesn’t go and nobody wants to miss out. It’s going to be carnage!

Welcome back to Midweek Milestones, the weekly article that gets into the numbers from the latest round of MLR action and pulls out the extreme, the unusual, and the standout stats! Round 7 is back to a full compliment of 3 games over the weekend, throwing up plenty of numbers for us to get into and as is tradition, we start with the appearance achievements!

Appearance Achievements

On Sunday, a 3rd member of MLR’s 2022 Collegiate Draft Class reached a half-century of appearances in the competition. Canadian prop Cali Martinez has developed into a regular front row starter for Old Glory DC and made his 50th appearance for the Flags in Round 7, joining teammate Collin Grosse and 1st overall pick Sam Golla in the half-century club!

Drafted out of the University of British Columbia after playing with the Thunderbirds, Martinez was the highest drafted Canadian in MLR history when he was selected 3rd overall by Old Glory DC in 2022 (Since surpassed by Neil Trainor in 2024). Along with Grosse & Golla, test capped Canadian Cali Martinez joins Conner Mooneyham (2020) and Emmanuel Albert (2021) as the 5th draftee in MLR history to reach a half-century of appearances in the competition! Martinez has gone from starting 1 game in 12 in his debut season, to 4 starts in 16 games in 2024, then 8 in 17 last season and 4 in 5 so far this year. He is earning more meaningful minutes each year and at just 29, Martinez is only just entering his prime as a front row. Congratulations, Cali!

Lining up opposite Martinez and Old Glory DC on Sunday were the Seattle Seawolves, who had a second player reaching their 100th Major League Rugby appearance, both of their career and for the Seawolves: Long time Captain Riekert Hattingh became the 6th player in league history to reach 100 caps, dating back to MLR’s inaugural season back in 2018! Hattingh has started every single one of his 100 games for Seattle, becoming the 3rd player to reach 100 starts in the competition, and joins Angus MacLellan (Utah), Moni Tonga’uiha (NOLA), and Seawolves teammate JP Smith as the only players to have earned 100 appearances with a single MLR team!

As if earning 100 starts in 100 games wasn’t an impressive enough achievement for 2x MLR Champion Hattingh, he’s currently MLR’s 2nd highest try scorer with 48 scores and 250pts scored, and is also 2nd all-time for metres gained with over 5,750m gained in possession behind only JP du Plessis on 6,234m. On his 100th Seawolves cap, Hattingh also became the 4th player in MLR history to pass 1,000 tackles made in the competition following Lucas Rumball, Dylan Fawsitt, and Johan Momsen! It doesn’t take too much math to figure out that Riekert Hattingh has averaged just over 10 tackles per game for 100 games across 9 seasons. Hattingh is a true MLR great and is very deserving of his double-milestone game, and it’s a bonus that the Seawolves were able to secure the win on the road. Congratulations, Riekert!

Team Milestones

The second half of the 2026 MLR season means that teams are coming up against opponents that they have already faced this year with the chance to sweep the regular season series on the line, and the Seattle Seawolves – complete with new Centurion Hattingh – recorded the first sweep of the season over Old Glory DC. These sides have met 7 times in total, but the Seawolves have only been the home team in this match up twice. The Seawolves and Flags previously met in Rd 2 where Seattle took a 33-16 victory in front of a home crowd and despite a 3-game skid after this, the Seawolves just seem to have DC’s number this year with a 25-30 victory at George Mason University. The conbines score for this Seattle Seawolves v Old Glory DC series is 63-41 in favour of Seattle, who pick up the maximum 10pts compared to DC’s 1.

The Chicago Hounds would (somewhat unsurprisingly) record their first sweep of 2026 shortly after Seattle on Sunday Night Rugby. Anthem RC remain the only team so far this season that have managed to keep the Hounds under 40pts scored after their 19-33 clash in Rd 2, and despite scoring 6 tries and 36pts in their trip to Seatgeek Stadium, it wasn’t enough to overcome the monster that is the 2026 Chicago Hounds. The home side raced out to a 9-try, 61-36 victory to bag the full 10pts from their series against the Rising Stars, 94-55 the combined score.

This huge win for the Chicago Hounds set a whole handful of records. After tying their franchise best 59pts scored earlier this season, the Hounds set a new franchise record for points scored, passing 60 for the first time. The combined score of 97pts was the highest scoring game ever for both the Hounds and Anthem RC, and is tied for the 4th highest scoring game in MLR history! The Hounds extend their run with The Old Mate to 5 games, and equal their longest ever win streak at 6 games. Will they set yet another franchise record next week?

Over in New England, the new-look Free Jacks have been struggling to get their season going so far but, after a franchise worst defeat at the hands of the California Legion back in Rd 2, the defending champions rallied in front of a home crowd to squeak a 26-21 victory in their second meeting with the Legion, thanks in part to the four yellow cards handed out to California. This game marked the 100th MLR game in franchise history for the Free Jacks, and their 91st regular season game all time!

The Free Jacks are the 6th franchise in MLR history to reach 100 games played (regular season + playoffs) and the first non-founding member to reach this milestone! Of the 6 teams to have reached 100 games played in Major League Rugby (Seattle, San Diego, Houston, Utah, NOLA, and now New England), the Free Jacks are only the 2nd team to play their 100th game in front of a home crowd and only the 3rd team of those 6 to record a victory in their 100th game, marking their 70th win as a franchise. Congratulations, Free Jacks!

Player Milestones

There is no doubt that rugby is a team game, but that doesn’t mean that individuals shouldn’t be congratulated for their achievements! The appearance achievements were already covered at the start of this Midweek Milestones article, so let’s get into some of the other individual achievements from Round 7, sticking with the New England Free Jacks to start us off!

As mentioned above, the defending champions earned their 70th win as a franchise in their 100th game on Sunday against the California Legion, but earning that win required an enormous defensive effort. In total, the Free Jacks completed a mammoth 226 tackles last weekend, easily the highest team total of Round 7. The starting back row led that effort with a combined SIXTY tackles, including 26 from returning Captain Joe Johnston (the Round Leader for this week), and 23 from former Maori All Black Jacob Norris. These 23 tackles took Norris’ 2026 tackle count to 105, becoming the first player this season to pass 100 tackles made, averaging a ridiculous 17.5 tackles per game and actually equalling his metres gained so far this season. Congratulations, Jacob!

On the topic of some bonkers numbers, the Chicago Hounds didn’t just set team records in their big win against Anthem. For the 2nd time this season, Brock Webster was named Player of the Week in Round 7 (technically the 2nd week in a row because there was no PotW in Round 6…) for another explosive performance! Webster set a new 2026 high with a whopping thirteen defenders beaten. To put that in perspective, the entire Free Jacks 23 recorded 12 defenders beaten. The previous 2026 season high of 11 was set by Ed Timpson back in Rd 1, which is still impressive considering he started on the bench!

If it wasn’t for the Player of the Week selection however, Webster’s performance may have been overshadowed by another of the Chicago Hounds back three, 2025 MLR Rookie of the Year Peyton Wall! The Indiana native and MLR Draftee dotted down for a try of his own and recorded an impressive 8 defenders beaten, but that’s not the highlight. That comes when you look at the metres made. Peyton Wall recorded an incredible 191m made which, when you add in the 20 post-contact metres, is a new 2026 high of 211m made. This smashes the previous season high of 165m set by Ryan James for the California Legion back in Round 2, and is the first time that a player has recorded over 200m in a game since Jade Stighling logged 229m gained for the Seattle Seawolves in Round 17 of last season. Congratulations, Peyton!

Wrapping Up

Round 7 of the 2026 Major League Rugby season gave us a pair of appearance achievements, a bundle of team milestones, and a handful of individual milestones! With the competition only getting more intense, here’s hoping that Round 8 will throw up just as many standout stats for us to cover in next week’s edition of Midweek Milestones!

Thank you for reading this week’s edition of Midweek Milestones! Please feel free to let me know what you thought of this article on social media, or let me know about a milestone that I may have missed!

Midweek Milestones: Standout Stats from Round 6 of the 2026 MLR Season!

NARDatabase

James Deeley

In what feels like the blink of an eye, the midway point of the 2026 Major League Rugby season has been and gone! With only 10 games per team, there hasn’t been much room for errors so far this year and as we enter the final 5 game stretch, it’s crunch time!

Welcome back to Midweek Milestones, the weekly article that gets into the numbers from the latest round of MLR action and pulls out the extreme, the unusual, and the standout stats! Even though Round 6 only had a pair of matches, the numbers from these 2 games threw up quite a lot of interesting stuff, so let’s get into it!

Appearance Achievements

As usual we kick things off with the Appearance Achievements, and there’s just the one this week but for the second time in 2026, it concerns Major League Rugby veteran and Chicago Hounds forward Luke White!

A few weeks ago, Luke White became the 6th player in MLR history to reach 100 appearances in the competition and coming off the bench again in Week 6 during their hard fought victory over Old Glory DC, White becomes just the 2nd player to reach 50 appearances for the Chicago Hounds! White follows Maclean Jones into Chicago’s half-century club. Congratulations!

Seawolves earn 73rd win!

The Seattle Seawolves got their season off to a flying start with a home victory over Old Glory DC back in Week 2, which marked the 72nd victory in team history to tie with long time rivals the San Diego Legion with the most wins in Major League Rugby History!

As impressive an achievement as this is, you may be forgiven for beginning to think it was more of a curse. The Seawolves have been struggling with injuries for the entire season so far, and went on a 3-game losing streak after earning this 72nd win. That changed last weekend however, as they put in a clinical performance to claim a bonus point victory over the New England Free Jacks at the formidable Fort Quincy! The 11-27 victory is the 73rd in Seawolves history to take them ahead of the San Diego Legion as the team with the most wins in MLR history!

As the only remaining founding member of Major League Rugby, the Seattle Seawolves have played more games than any other team, recording their 73 victories in 127 games for a win rate of 57.48% and combining 64 wins in 114 regular season games (56.14%) with a remarkable 9 wins from 13 post-season matches (69.23%) that includes four visits to the MLR Championship Game, lifting the Shield twice! Congratulations, Seawolves!

Their opponents on Sunday, the New England Free Jacks, are really not far behind however with 69 wins in their 99 MLR games since joining in 2020 (2 seasons after Seattle!), with an incredible win rate of 69.7% across all games. They are 4 wins behind Seattle with at least 5 games left in 2026. It’s a tough ask, but I would never count them out.

Scoring Milestones

As mentioned, there were quite a few standout stats in Week 6 considering there were only a pair of matches, and most of them relate to scoring milestones so let’s get stuck in and while we’re talking about the Seattle Seawolves, let’s start there!

There was a bit of a twist ending to the Seawolves’ road victory over the Free Jacks. Seattle managed to secure the try bonus point with their 4th try of the game right at the death through Tiai Vavao’s first pro try and with the clock in the red and the game already won, who should step up to take the conversion but long time Seawolves captain, Riekert Hattingh. I know Seattle have had some injury trouble but I didn’t expect the big back row to be lining up a shot at goal, and he absolutely smashed it!

Having channelled his inner John Eales, Hattingh becomes the first forward in MLR history to score a conversion kick, and those 2pts actually took his career total to an even 250pts scored in the competition, joining his 46 – yes, FORTY-SIX – tries and 3 automatic conversions for tries under the posts (which is no longer a rule in 2026). This puts Hattingh 15th on MLR’s all-time scoring list, and I expect we’ll be talking about him again in next week’s Midweek Milestones, because he’s sat on 999 tackles made. Congratulations, Riekert!

Moving over to the other game of Week 6, where we saw another pair of scoring milestones in a very hard fought Chicago Hounds victory, with Old Glory DC giving them probably their toughest test of the season to date. The 49-31 scoreline isn’t particularly reflective of just how much of a war this game was, and both fly-halves stood out!

Starting with the home side, I mentioned in last week’s Midweek Milestones article that I expected Chris Hilsenbeck’s success rate from the tee to bounce back, and it certainly did in this one! The USA Eagle slotted 4 conversions and 3 penalties, going 7/8 (87.5%) from the tee and racking up 17pts scored to absolutely breeze past both 150pts in his MLR career (thanks to 11pts scored for Rugby ATL in 2023) and 150pts for the Chicago Hounds, reaching 165pts in his 24 game MLR career so far, and we aren’t done there! Hilsenbeck’s 17pts scored ties a single game Chicago Hounds record, matching Nate Augspurger’s total from a hat trick (and 1 auto-conversion) back in 2024. Congratulations, Chris!

Not to be outdone however Hilsenbeck’s opposite number over on the Old Glory DC side, Jason Robertson, also put in a brilliant performance and didn’t just let his place kicking do the talking! Robertson dotted down in both the first 10 minutes and the last 10 minutes to bag a brace for Old Glory, adding another 4pts off the tee from a pair of conversions for 14pts in total! This takes Robertson’s total up to 412pts scored in his MLR career, becoming the 5th player in League history to pass 400pts scored, and leapfrogging Seattle’s Davy Coetzer (410) for 4th place all-time! In the first Midweek Milestones article of the season I highlighted Coetzer and Robertson as they moved into the Top 5 and mentioned that their scoring battle could be one to watch throughout the 2026 campaign, and it’s just as close now as it was then!

Standout Stats

Flying around the league to give a shoutout to another player that hit a big milestone this week that isn’t quite as flashy as scoring points, test capped Canadian hooker Dewald Kotze recorded more tackles than any other Seawolves player in their road win in New England, completing 15 in total to take his career total over 500! The South African born Canadian now sits on 510 tackles in 56 MLR games (41 starts), averaging 9.1 tackles per game. Not shabby at all for a front row. Congratulations, Dewy!

Wrapping Up

A club half-century, a Major League Rugby first, and a bunch of big scoring milestones from just the two games in Week 6 of MLR’s 2026 campaign. With teams bringing in reinforcements for their playoff pushes, and no room for any slip-ups in the remaining 5 games of the regular season, the action is only going to heat up! Make sure you come back next week to check out all the Midweek Milestones from Round 7 of the 2026 MLR Season!

Thank you for reading this week’s edition of Midweek Milestones! I hope you enjoy reading these articles as much as I enjoy writing them, and find them interesting and engaging. Please feel free to let me know what you thought of this article on social media, or if you’ve found a milestone that I may have missed! You can find me, or NARDB, on social media here: @MLRStats on Instagram/Threads, JamDelay & @NARugbyDB on Twitter/X, and @JamDelay & @NARDB on Bluesky. Alternatively, you can reach out to NARDB directly via the ‘Contact’ tab on this site.

Finally, if you’re looking to pick up some new gear, visit rugbynow.com and use code ‘MLRSTATS’ at checkout for 15% off of your order!

Midweek Milestones: Standout Stats from Round 5 of the 2026 MLR Season!

NARDatabase

James Deeley

It may be hard to believe, but we are already five rounds into the 2026 Major League Rugby campaign, which means we’re approaching the half way point of the regular season! Week 5 delivered another 3 highly entertaining matches across the US which of course generated a whole bunch of new stats for us to dig into, so let’s do just that!

Welcome back to Midweek Milestones, the weekly article that gets into the numbers from the latest round of MLR action and pulls out the extreme, the unusual, and the standout stats to highlight both player and team milestones that may have otherwise flown under the radar. A word of warning, it’s quite a Chicago Hounds focused edition this week but as is now tradition, we start with MLR appearance achievements and there’s just the one this week, up in Seattle!

Appearance Achievements – Duncan Matthews

On Friday night in front of a home crowd, Duncan Matthews took the pitch for his 50th Major League Rugby appearance! He has represented the Seattle Seawolves for his entire MLR career, and has started every single one of his half-century of appearances for the team. A transplant to the PNW from the Western Cape of South Africa, Matthews refined his game as he progressed through the Blue Bulls academy system in his homeland. He represented the Blue Bulls at both Currie Cup levels and in Super Rugby between 2017-18 before moving to the Lions, where he also played in both the Currie Cup and Super Rugby from 2019-2021.

Matthews joined the Seawolves ahead of their 2022 campaign and proved absolutely lethal. He earned 16 appearances in his debut season and scored 7 tries on just shy of 1,500m gained, both of which remain career highs for the fullback, and were enough to earn him an All-MLR First XV selection in his debut season, helping the Seawolves to their 3rd Championship Final, where they fell to the New York Ironworkers.

Now in his 5th MLR season with the Seawolves, the 32yo has shown little sign of slowing down. He and Seattle finished as MLR Runners-Up again in 2024, and last season he contributed 6 tries and 10 assists in 13 games, finishing top of the league with 1,152m gained and picking up an All-MLR Second XV selection, the second All-MLR nod of his career. In fact there’s an argument to be made that Matthews is actually speeding up! Entering the 2026 campaign Duncan Matthews was averaging an impressive 89.4m gained per game, but through his first 3 games of this season he’s been averaging 98.0m gained per game and could even pass the 5,000m mark this year! Congratulations on your half-century, Duncan!

O’Keeffe passes 5k!

Speaking of that elusive 5,000m gained milestone, only 5 players in MLR history had passed that mark prior to Week 5, but now that number has grown to 6. On the opposite side of the field from Duncan Matthews, Chicago Hounds winger Mark O’Keeffe recorded 63m gained in their huge road victory to take his career total to 5,013m gained and become just the 6th player in MLR history to pass 5,000m gained in their career!

A MLR Runner-Up with Rugby ATL in 2021 and two-time All-MLR selection in 2021 (Second XV) and 2022 (First XV), the Irishman and capped USA Eagle has averaged 59.0m gained per game across his 85 game (72 start) MLR career, splitting his time between centre and wing. Primarily playing on the wing so far this season, in just 4 games O’Keeffe has recorded 243m gained, already passing his 2025 total of 231m gained in more than three times the number of games! A ferocious runner, O’Keeffe also sits within the League’s top 10 try scorers, adding his 29th career try in Week 5 (and 3rd in 4 games so far this season) to pass 150pts scored in total, and is closing in on 500 tackles completed on defence! Congratulations Mark, although you still have a little way to go if you want to overtake MLR’s all-time leader, JP du Plessis, who sits on 6,234m gained, the only player over the 6k milestone!

Hounds’ Hat Trick Hero!

Despite Mark O’Keeffe’s rare achievement in the Chicago Hounds’ Friday night clash with the Seattle Seawolves, most of the attention instead went to his back three teammate, Brock Webster. Test capped at both 7s and 15s, the Canadian Speedster and 2025 Championship MVP recorded 3 of the Hounds’ nine tries against the Seawolves, 7 of which were scored by Canadians! Starting his MLR journey with the Toronto Arrows in 2022 before joining the Canadian Sevens program, returning with the Free Jacks to lift the Shield in 2025 and now a part of the Chicago Hounds’ strong Canadian contingent, this is the first hat trick of Brock Webster’s MLR career, the 5th hat trick in Hounds history, and the 54th hat trick in MLR history. Congratulations, Brock!

The Chicago Hounds’ New Top Scorer!

Heading into Week 5, dual test capped fly-half Chris Hilsenbeck sat level with fellow USA Eagle Luke Carty (now with Anthem RC) as the Hounds’ all-time points scorers, both on 127pts. With 10pts from the boot off of 5 successful conversions, Hilsenbeck now moves into sole possession of 1st place and becomes the Chicago Hounds’ all-time leading scorer!

Chris Hilsenbeck has scored 148pts in Major League Rugby following 11pts in 4 games with Rugby ATL back in 2023, but has been the Hounds go-to place kicker since joining the team for the 2025 season, recording his lone try and a Hounds single-season record of 109pts to finish as MLR Top Scorer in his debut season in the Windy City. Hilsenbeck has racked up his 137pts in only 19 games for Chicago, averaging 7.2ppg and has a 75.64% success rate from the tee in green & white. Even though his kicking has taken a dip so far this season (14/24 – 58.33%), once this bounces back – and I believe it will – who knows how many points Hilsenbeck will end up on by the end of the season!

Team Stats

O’Keeffe’s score, Hilsenbeck’s place kicking, and Webster’s triple helped the Chicago Hounds to their first ever victory over the Seattle Seawolves on their 5th attempt since entering MLR in 2023, and what a way to do it! The 59pts scored by the Hounds ties a team record for both the most points and the most tries (9) scored in a single game, and breaks the team record for their biggest winning margin at 37pts, surpassing the 33pt winning margin the last time they scored 59pts in a 59-26 win over Anthem back in 2024.

On the other hand, the was the most points ever conceded by the Seattle Seawolves, surpassing the 57pts scored by the LA Giltinis way back in 2021. This was the Seawolves’ first home loss since Round 6 of the 2025 season against the Utah Warriors and, amazingly, the first time that the Seawolves haven’t picked up at least 1 table point at home since Round 8 of 2022! The injury bug has hit Seattle worse than any other team so far this season, which is a perfect storm when you remember that 2026 is far shorter than previous seasons, but they have a few players on the road to recovery. The Seawolves currently tied with the San Diego Legion with the most wins in MLR at 73 each, and have 6 games remaining this season. 6 opportunities to become the winningest team in MLR history!

Tackle Milestones

Of note for the Seattle Seawolves this week however, was Paddy Ryan’s performance. the Irish USA Eagle recorded an almost mythical 29 tackles completed in Week 5 which, to put it in perspective, is only the 7th time in Major League Rugby history that a player has recorded 29+ tackles in a game, and Ryan is the 6th man to do it! Amazingly, Canadian international and former Rugby ATL and RFCLA man Matt Heaton actually managed it twice, with a 29-tackle game in 2020 and a frankly ridiculous 32-tackle game in 2022 which remains the MLR record!

Flying around the rest of the league to finish up, there were a pair of tackle milestones, starting with (you guessed it) a Chicago Hound! Selected 2nd overall in the 2021 MLR Collegiate Draft, Lindenwood University alum Emmanuel Albert spent his first 4 seasons with the Houston SaberCats where he became the first MLR draftee to reach 50 appearances in the competition! Now with the Chicago Hounds, last weekend he became just the 2nd draftee to pass 500 tackles made after 2022 1st Overall Pick, Sam Golla!

Slightly further up the MLR tackle leaderboard, long time Utah Warriors back row Bailey Wilson completed an impressive 782 in 80 games in the Beehive State, recording 5 seasons with 100+ tackles, and a 200+ tackle season in 2022! Now playing for the New England Free Jacks alongside his brother Mitch, Wilson completed 12 tackles in the defending Champs’ first victory of the season to pass 800 made in his career! Perhaps one of MLR’s most underrated heavy hitters, Bailey Wilson now joins the likes of Free Jacks Captain Joe Johnston (833), Shield-Winner Nate Brakeley (842), and DC bruiser Ben Bonasso (879)!

Wrapping Up

As mentioned in the intro, this week’s Midweek Milestones article is very Chicago Hounds heavy, but that’s almost to be expected for a team that has scored 25 tries and a whopping 157pts in their last 3 games! Next week, the only two teams with a mid-season bye, Anthem RC and the California Legion, take their week off so there’s only a pair of games to choose from on Sunday, what kind of stats will they reveal?

Thank you for reading this week’s edition of Midweek Milestones! I hope you enjoy reading these articles as much as I enjoy writing them, and find them interesting and engaging. Please feel free to let me know what you thought of this article on social media, or if you’ve found a milestone that I may have missed!

You can find NARDB/James on social media here: @MLRStats on Instagram/Threads, 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 gear, visit rugbynow.com and use code ‘MLRSTATS’ at checkout for 15% off of your order!

Midweek Milestones: Standout Stats from Round 4 of the 2026 MLR Season!

NARDatabase

James Deeley

The 4th round of Major League Rugby’s 2026 season saw some big scores, big tries, and big hats as the league headed to Nashville for the first time ever as the Chicago Hounds took on the New England Free Jacks in the first ever Music City Rugby Showdown! That doesn’t even mention the West Coast Classic on Sunday Night Rugby, or The Old Mate. As always, there was a bunch of standout stats from Round 4, so let’s get into them!

Welcome back to Midweek Milestones, a weekly article that dives into the numbers from the latest round of MLR action and pulls out the extreme, the unusual, and the standout stats to highlight player or team achievements and milestones that may have otherwise flown under the radar. As always we start with a few appearance achievements, the first of which wasn’t so subtle!

Appearance Achievements

Coming off the bench for the Chicago Hounds in the 45th minute of their huge 50-26 victory over the defending champions in Nashville, veteran forward Luke White became just the 5th player in league history to earn his 100th MLR appearance!

The Sydney, Australia native moved to Colorado in 2015 and joined the Glendale Raptors, then a club side. He is one of very few active MLR players to have played in the short-lived PRO Rugby competition, representing the Denver Stampede in their lone season in 2016. White remained with the Raptors when Major League Rugby was founded, and earned 25 starts in 31 games between 2018-2020, finishing as a Runner-Up in 2019 when he enjoyed a superb season, scoring 3 tries and gaining 1,227m while completing over 150 tackles that year.

Following the withdrawal of the Raptors following the COVID-shortened 2020 season, Luke White headed to the west coast to join the heavily Australian influenced LA Giltinis. It was with the Giltinis that he earned his first (and to date, only) MLR title in 2021, defeating Rugby ATL at the LA Coliseum. White played with the Giltinis for their entire tenure in MLR from 2021-22, earning 16 starts in 21 games in total and becoming the 13th player in MLR history to reach 50 appearances in May of 2022 (taking him almost 4 years to double it!). With the Giltinis also withdrawing from MLR, Luke White was selected by the Chicago Hounds in the dispersal draft, joining the team ahead of their inaugural season in 2023 and playing there ever since.

Following his debut season with the Hounds, White was included in the USA Eagles squad for their 2023 Autumn Internationals, and earned his test debut against Romania as Eagle #561. He’s earned 5 test caps for the Eagles to date and continues to contribute for the Chicago Hounds as he nears his 50th appearance for the team (currently on 48). He is likely to pass 4,000m gained this season as well as 800 tackles made, which puts him in the Top 20 all-time in both categories. There’s no word on whether Luke White will keep playing beyond 2026, but if he ends it with a Shield for the Chicago Hounds in Chicago, what a send off that would be. Congratulations, Luke!

MLR’s 5th Centurion would obviously steal the headlines for standout stats this week, but that wasn’t the only appearance milestone around the league in week 4. Over in California, New York born, Australia raised scrum-half Tas Smith came off the bench for the California Legion in their hard fought win over the Seattle Seawolves to earn his 50th MLR appearance! Smith has represented 3 different sides in MLR, all based in California. He entered the league with the LA Giltinis under Stephen Hoiles in 2022 and actually played alongside Luke White that year before returning to Australia to complete his studies at the University of Sydney in 2023. His 2nd stint in MLR started in 2024 when he joined Rugby FC LA, also under Hoiles. Tas Smith was RFCLA’s most capped player during their time in MLR, appearing in 32 of their 33 games between 2024-2025 and was even on the bench for the 33rd, but was an unused reserve! Staying in California, Smith once again followed Hoiles and much of the RFCLA setup to the California Legion, where he has featured in every game so far this season to reach his half-century! To date, Tas Smith has 16 starts, 3 tries scored on just shy of 600m gained, and an even 150 tackles made. Not too shabby for a scrum-half!

Chicago Defend The Old Mate!

After 2 successful challenges for The Old Mate in a row, the Chicago Hounds became the first team to successfully defend MLR’s Supporters’ Challenge so far this season, scoring 50pts for the 3rd time in team history to see off the New England Free Jacks (incidentally, this is the most points ever conceded by the Free Jacks…) in Nashville. With a successful defence, the Chicago Hounds retain The Old Mate which gives the Seattle Seawolves a chance to take possession of MLR’s newest oldest trophy next week!

First Overall Pick Party in Charlotte!

Heading over to American Legion Memorial Stadium in Charlotte, where Old Glory DC picked up a convincing victory over Anthem RC on Saturday, but there was something else worth talking about from this game than just the final score. The broadcast understandably highlighted the clash of Rick Rose and Will Sherman, both 1st overall picks (from 2023 & 2025 respectively) and both playing lock opposite each other, but they weren’t the only 1st overall picks on display.

In fact, there were a total of FIVE 1st Overall MLR draft picks in this game! Four of them playing for Anthem RC: Conner Mooneyham (2020 – Life), Sam Golla (2022 – UC Berkeley), Erich Storti (2024 – St. Mary’s), and Will Sherman (2025 – UCLA), with the aforementioned Rick Rose (2023 – St. Bonaventure) representing Old Glory DC!

This is the most No. 1 Draft Picks to ever feature in a single MLR game, surpassing the previous record of 4 in a match between Anthem RC and the Miami Sharks last season, featuring four of the same five players (Mooneyham, Golla, Storti for Anthem RC, and Rick Rose for Miami) minus Will Sherman, who had not been drafted yet. With only 6 first overall draft picks in MLR history, to have 5 of them feature in a single game is highly unusual!

Metres Milestones

Diving deep into some numbers now and sticking to a First Overall draft pick. MLR’s first ever draft pick in fact: Conner Mooneyham! The Life U alum has been on fire to start his second season with Anthem, scoring 3 tries in 4 games so far including a brace (on his birthday!) in the team’s first ever victory back in Round 1. Mooneyham has already racked up over 250m made this season to take his career total over the 2,500m mark! This is an average of 44.2m made per game over his career but so far in 2026, that average is up at 63m per game. Congratulations on 2.5km, Conner!

Turning our attention to the big men in the forwards, who often find metres made far harder to come by. 2019 World Rugby Player of the Year Nominee Joe Taufete’e made 12 hard-fought metres for the California Legion in their tough victory over the Seattle Seawolves to move past 1,000m in his career! Averaging 23.4m made per game across his 43 match MLR career, Taufete’e’s numbers may seem low when compared to the likes of Mooneyham but ‘Big Joe’ is earning all of those metres the hard way, slogging it out in close range against opposing heavies. Congratulations, Joe!

Coetzer Passes 400!

The Seattle Seawolves made one of the bigger splashes of the off-season in the signing of former Houston SaberCats talisman, Davy Coetzer. Through his first 4 games in the PNW, the South African has proved that he absolutely lives up to the hype! Despite the Seawolves’ loss to the California Legion down in LA, Coetzer picked up 2 tries and another 9pts from the tee to record a new season-high of 19pts scored in a single game, passing the 18pts he scored back in Rd 2, tied with California’s Coby Miln!

This brace takes Coetzer up to 20 career MLR tries, and his 19pts takes him up to a whopping 45pts on the season, which is even more impressive when you consider that the New England Free Jacks have only scored 50pts as a team! What’s more, with this haul of points, Davy Coetzer became just the 4th player in MLR history to pass 400pts scored in the Competition! He joins Joe Pietersen (420pts), AJ Alatimu (504pts), and Sam Windsor (595pts)! The 27yo is in excellent form which should excite any fan of US rugby as he closes in on Eagles eligiblity. Congratulations, Davy!

Wrapping Up

With a 5th Centurion, a ‘Who’s Who’ of first round draft picks, and a handful of individual scoring and metre milestones, that just about does it for this edition of Midweek Milestones! I hope you enjoy reading these articles as much as I enjoy writing them, and found something interesting. Please feel free to let me know what you thought of this article on social media, or if you’ve found a milestone that I may have missed!

You can find NARDB/James on social media here: @MLRStats on Instagram/Threads, 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 gear, visit rugbynow.com and use code ‘MLRSTATS’ at checkout for 15% off of your order!

Midweek Milestones: Standout Stats from Round 3 of the 2026 MLR Season!

NARDatabase

James Deeley

Welcome back to Midweek Milestones from Round 3 of Major League Rugby action in 2026! This weekly series aims to keep fans up to date on some of the individual and team milestones from the latest round of MLR games that may have gone under the radar, but still absolutely deserve some recognition!

I hope that you find this article, and this series, interesting and informative. Who knows, if there is ever a Major League Rugby themed pub quiz, they might come in very handy! As mentioned, this particular article will cover the three matches from Round 3 of the 2026 season, starting off with an appearance milestone for Old Glory DC!

Appearance Achievements

When Collin Grosse came off the bench in the 62nd minute of Old Glory DC’s road victory over the New England Free Jacks at Fort Quincy he became just the 4th MLR draftee ever to reach 50 appearances in the competition behind Emmanuel Albert, Tavite Lopeti, and Conner Mooneyham, earning all 50 with the Flags!

Collin Grosse becomes the first player from the 2022 MLR Draft Class to reach a half-century of games played, ahead of the likes of Sam Golla and DC teammates Cali Martinez and KoiKoi Nelligan, and is the 2nd fastest draftee to reach 50 appearances, reaching the milestone 1,148 days after his MLR debut! Only long time Houston SaberCat Emmanuel Albert, now with the Chicago Hounds, managed it quicker but not by much (1,113 days from MLR debut).

Scoring Milestones

For the most part, the California Legion’s trip to Chicago was as miserable as the weather at SeatGeek Stadium, but despite the relentless rain it wasn’t a complete wash out. Thanks to a late try from Joey Mano, the Legion left the Windy City with a try bonus point, marking Mano’s first score for the Legion and 40th of his MLR career!

On the back of 39 tries during his time with the Utah Warriors including a pair of 14-try seasons in 2023 & 2025, Joey Mano becomes just the 4th player in MLR history to reach 40 tries scored, behind league legends Dylan Fawsitt (65), Riekert Hattingh (48), and Paula Balekana (46)! Mano reached this milestone in just 57 appearances, recording 0.7 tries per game; Highest among MLR’s 40+ try scorers!

Joey Mano may have secured the Try BP for the California Legion, but their scoring was opened by one of his former Warriors teammates: Lance Williams! Like Joey Mano, Williams’ first try for the Legion was also a milestone. It marked his 20th score in Major League Rugby! It may not be the lofty heights of 40 tries, but 20 scores for a hard running, hard tackling back row is no mean feat. There aren’t many players in the league that can boast 20 tries, over 3000m gained, and over 900 tackles like Lance Williams. Congratulations!

In the same game that Julian Roberts recorded the 100th try in Anthem RC team history, fly-half Luke Carty kicked a round-high 14pts to help lift the Rising Stars over the Seawolves. Although this was only Carty’s 3rd game with the Rising Stars after joining in the off-season, these 14pts took the capped USA Eagle over 250 in his MLR career! With 50pts for the LA Giltinis (2021-22), 127pts for the Chicago Hounds (2023-24 – he remains the team’s top scorer!), 49pts for the NOLA Gold last year, and 27pts for Anthem in 2026 so far, Carty has gone 104/152 from the tee in his MLR career for a success rate of 68.42% to go with a lone try scored back in 2024, for a career total of 253pts. He becomes the 13th player in MLR history to pass 250pts scored, congratulations, Luke!

Tackle Milestones

Round 3 saw a trio of players reach significant career tackle milestones, starting with Canadian international and Chicago Hounds back row, Mason Flesch who recorded 7 tackles made in the Hounds’ big home victory over the California Legion to pass 500 tackles made in his 60 game MLR career to average 8.38 tackles per game! Flesch has recorded over 100 tackles in his last 3 seasons including a career high of 165 tackles last season. It’ll be tough to reach triple-figures in the shortened 2026 season, can he do it again?

Moving much closer to the top of Major League Rugby’s all-time tacklers list, Johan Momsen also completed 7 tackles in Round 3 as Anthem RC earned their 2nd win of the season over the Seattle Seawolves in front of a home crowd. As a result, the Anthem Captain became the 3rd player in MLR history to pass 1,000 tackles made in the competition, now sat on 1,004 tackles! Momsen first entered Major League Rugby with Rugby ATL for their inaugural season in 2020, representing the RATLers from 2020-23, finishing as a MLR Runner-Up in 2021 and completing over 600 tackles in his 4 seasons in Marietta before heading to Texas to join the Houston SaberCats where he spent two seasons, completed 345 tackles, and finished as a runner-up for a second time in 2025. Now with Anthem RC, Momsen currently leads the league for tackles made in 2026, completing 43 in just 3 games!

Johan Momsen has recorded 5 seasons in a row with at least 125 tackles completed, including a pair of 200+ tackles seasons in 2021 and 2025, the latter of which was a career high at 220! He looks set to reach triple figures again despite the shortened season and reached 1,000 tackles in just 28 games more than Mason Flesch reached 500, averaging an impressive 11.41 tackles across his 88 game MLR career so far!

The big South African forward passes 1,000 tackles behind Dylan Fawsitt (1,040) and MLR’s All-Time tackle leader, Lucas Rumball! The Canada and Chicago Hounds Captain’s Man of the Match performance in Round 3’s victory over the California Legion saw him score a brace of tries and complete 15 tackles in total to push his MLR-leading tackle total over 1,100 to 1,106 in even fewer games than Momsen, averaging a massive 13.17 tackles across his 84 game MLR career between the Toronto Arrows and Chicago Hounds!

Wrapping Up

Round 3 of the 2026 season brought us the 1st member of the 2022 MLR Collegiate Draft Class to reach 50 appearances, the 3rd MLR player to pass 1,000 tackles completed, and the 4th player in MLR history to reach 40 tries scored, and that’s not even covering everything in this article! I hope you found this informative and entertaining, and please feel free to reach out on social media with any questions. Be sure to come back next week for all the Midweek Milestones from Round 4 of the 2026 MLR season!

If you find any milestones that haven’t been mentioned here, you can let NARDB/James know on social media: @MLRStats on Instagram/Threads, 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 gear, visit rugbynow.com and use code ‘MLRSTATS’ at checkout for 15% off of your order!

Midweek Milestones: Standout Stats from the 2025 Championship Game!

NARDatabase

James Deeley

Just like that, the 2025 Major League Rugby season has come to an end with a huge weekend-long party in Rhode Island! Although the vast majority of fans were cheering for the ‘hometown’ New England Free Jacks, rugby fans from all over North America converged at the brand new Centreville Bank Stadium, the home of Rhode Island FC of the USL for the culmination of a season’s worth of hard work from the Free Jacks and the Houston SaberCats!

Welcome back to the final Midweek Milestones of the 2025 MLR season! This week’s article will cover the Championship Game which, while being the biggest game of the season, is still only a single game. There are still plenty of standout stats related to the Final, all of which will be covered below! The purpose of this series of articles is to highlight milestones met by either teams or players that deserve recognition, and provide MLR and rugby fans with some additional context and interesting info about recent games and the history of the league. Enjoy!

Threepeat: Complete!

The Houston SaberCats put in a valiant effort, reeling the New England Free Jacks back in twice as the reigning champions tried to pull away from the Western Conference Champions, but in the end it wasn’t quite enough. The Free Jacks claimed an historic 28-22 victory in Rhode Island to secure their 3rd straight MLR Shield, completing the first Threepeat in US Major Sports since the Los Angeles Lakers lifted the Larry O’Brien Trophy 3 times in a row in the NBA from 2000-2002! Congratulations, New England!

The Free Jacks now hold the most Shields in MLR history, moving ahead of the Seattle Seawolves who claimed their two Shields in the league’s early years, from 2018-2019. New England and Seattle are also the only active teams to have won a Championship, as the 2021 Champion LA Giltinis withdrew after 2022, and the 2022 Champion Rugby New York Ironworkers withdrew after 2023.

The Winners of the MLR Shield each season: 2018-2025

The New England Free Jacks’ Third victory marks the 4th season in a row that the Shield has gone to the Eastern Conference Champion. The East now moves ahead of the West, who claimed the League’s first 3 Shields but now trial the East 4-3 with the Shield not awarded in 2020.

Hollinshead Hits 13!

Converting two of the New England Free Jacks’ tries and adding three penalties for a combined 5/6 from the tee in the Championship Game, Free Jacks fly-half Dan Hollinshead kept the scoreboard ticking over with 13pts in total: Tied for the 2nd most points ever scored by a player in a MLR Championship Game!

Hollinshead was parachuted in to fill the gap left by an injured Jayson Potroz this season and coincidentally, his 13pts in a Final now only trails the 15pts scored by Potroz himself in the 2024 Championship Game, a 11-20 victory over the Seattle Seawolves. Hollinshead draws level with San Diego Legion legend Joe Pietersen, who recorded 13pts including a drop goal in the 2019 MLR Championship, and Matt Giteau, who scored 13pts for the LA Giltinis in their 2021 Championship victory.

Webster named Championship MVP!

Having assisted superbly on both of Paula Balekana’s tries in the Free Jacks‘ Championship victory and very very nearly getting on the scoreboard himself, Brock Webster became the first Canadian and just the 2nd domestic player ever to be named Major League Rugby Championship MVP!

Spectacular under the high ball, Webster is capped for Canada at both Sevens and 15s levels and joins Vili Toluta’u back in 2018 as the only two domestic players named as Man of the Match in the Championship Game! Webster breaks a 3-year streak of New Zealanders winning the award, with ex-All Black Andy Ellis winning for Rugby New York in 2022, before fellow Free Jacks Jayson Potroz (2023) and Jed Melvin (2024) claimed the award in New England’s first two Shield victories. Congratulations, Brock!

MLR Championship MVPs: 2018-2025

Schumacher & Balekana Both Bag Braces!

Prior to 2025, only 3 players had scored multiple tries in a MLR Championship game. Following Saturday’s latest Final, that number has now grown to 5. Zach Fenoglio (2018 – Glendale Raptors), John Ryberg (2021 – LA Giltinis) and Nate Augspurger (2023 – San Diego Legion) have been joined by both Paula Balekana (New England Free Jacks) and Max Schumacher (Houston SaberCats) as the group of players to score a brace of tries in the MLR Championship game! No-one has scored a hat trick in the Final, yet….

Balekana’s two tries took his 2025 total to an extraordinary 15 tries on the season. This ties his career high and MLR record for tries in a season, first achieved by Balekana in 2023. Thanks to a superb season this year Balekana sits as MLR’s 3rd highest try scorer of all time, 7 tries ahead of Joe Mano (who scored 14 of his own this year) and only two tries behind Riekert Hattingh in 2nd place on 48! The gap from 2nd to 3rd place has completely closed this year, while Dylan Fawsitt has extended his lead as MLR’s all-time leading try scorer and is now sat on a ridiculous 65 tries!

Alatimu Passes 500!

AJ Alatimu appeared in his 2nd MLR Championship Game and first with the Houston SaberCats. He is one of very few players to have represented multiple teams in the MLR Shield game, having represented the Seattle Seawolves in the 2022 final. Unfortunately, the test capped Samoan playmaker falls to an 0-2 record in Championship games.

On the plus side, Alatimu’s two conversions and single penalty gave his side 7pts as he went 3/5 from the boot. Alatimu is MLR’s all-time leading playoff scorer with a total of 89pts in the postseason. These 7pts also take the veteran up to 2nd League-wide on the 2025 season with 98pts behind the only player to pass 100pts this year, Chris Hilsenbeck of the Chicago Hounds on 109pts. Alatimu is the 3rd highest scorer in Houston SaberCats history, now on 183pts. This is an impressive total in isolation, but when adding this to his 321pts scored with the Seattle Seawolves (where he is still the all-time top scorer despite having not played with Seattle since 2023), this takes his all-time total to 504pts.

AJ Alatimu becomes MLR’s 2nd ever 500pt scorer!

Following his 7pts in the 2025 Championship Game, AJ Alatimu becomes just the 2nd player ever to pass 500pts scored in Major League Rugby! Alatimu has scored 3 tries, 77 penalties, and a MLR-leading 129 conversions in his 74 game MLR career so far, with a career high of 166pts for Seattle back in 2022 when he finished as the League’s Top Scorer! Alatimu, who is becoming a Houston SaberCats legend in his own right, sits behind only Sam Windsor (speaking of SaberCats’ legends…) on 595pts points scored in MLR. Congratulations, AJ!

Wrapping Up

A handful of interesting Championship-specific standout stats, as well as the 2nd player in MLR history to pass 500pts scored in the competition. That concludes the 2025 Major League Rugby season as well as this season’s Midweek Milestones articles!

While Midweek Milestones is done for the year, NARDB will be publishing weekly Player Moves Summaries from roughly August onwards (depending on the number of moves that week!), as well as draft-centric content and a few videos regarding big league news (yes, NARDB has a Youtube Channel), so there will still be plenty of content for you MLR die-hards out there!

Whether you read part of one week’s article, or every word all season long, thank you. I hope that these articles have been both interesting and entertaining, and who knows, maybe one day they will be full of answers to pub quiz questions! If there’s anything that has been missed, you can reach out to NARDB via the ‘Contact’ tab on this site. Alternatively, you can reach out to NARDB or James on social media: @MLRStats on Instagram/Threads, @JamDelay & @NARugbyDB on Twitter/X, and @JamDelay & @NARDB on Bluesky!

Midweek Milestones: Standout Stats from the 2025 Conference Finals!

Featured Photo Source: @wadebphotos

NARDatabase

James Deeley

Following a 17 round regular season and two weeks of intense playoff action, the 2025 Major League Rugby Conference Champions have been declared and the MLR Shield awaits. The Eastern Conference Champion will face off against the Western Conference Champion in the 2025 Championship at Centreville Bank Stadium in Pawtucket, Rhode Island to determine who will lift the 2025 Shield. Welcome back to Midweek Milestones!

This is NARDB’s weekly article that highlights and examines the standout stats from each round of MLR action! The purpose of this article is to bring attention to achievements, milestones, and standout stats achieved by players and teams throughout MLR with the aim to give them the recognition and applause they deserve. The penultimate article of the 2025 season will cover the two Conference Finals matchups. Because it only covers a pair of games, it is a shorter than average article, but hopefully one that is just as interesting!

The Championship Clash!

Following the Conference Finals last weekend, we now know the two teams that will fight it out to lift the 2025 MLR Shield! The New England Free Jacks claimed their 3rd straight Eastern Conference Championship with a 21-20 victory following a heartbreaking final minute missed penalty from the Chicago Hounds. The Free Jacks saw off the Miami Sharks in the Conference Semifinal, before defeating the Chicago Hounds in the Eastern Conference Final for the 2nd straight year to earn their 3rd Championship appearance in a row with a chance to lift their 3rd Shield in as many seasons and cement their legacy as a dynasty!

By contrast, before 2025 the Houston SaberCats had never won a Major League Rugby playoff game despite qualifying ever year since 2022, including as the top team in MLR in 2024. This year, the ‘Cats qualified 2nd in the Western Conference with a 10-6 record and 54pts (just 1pt behind the Free Jacks). Houston earned their first playoff victory over a spirited Rugby FC LA side in the Conference Semifinals, before dominating the top regular season team in the Western Conference Final, the Utah Warriors.

The SaberCats racked up 33pts on the road against the Warriors, scoring more points than any other team in the 2025 postseason, surpassing the 32pts scored by the New England Free Jacks in their victory over Miami which remains the biggest margin of victory in this year’s postseason so far. The SaberCats also became the first team to score 5 tries in a 2025 playoff game which, when added to their 4 tries from the Western Conference Semifinal, takes their playoff try total to 9 in 2025 compared to the Free Jacks’ 7. For those wondering, the MLR Playoff record for points in a game is 46, set by the Seattle Seawolves in a Conference Final victory against the Houston SaberCats in 2022. The Seawolves scored 6 tries in that game, and 12 postseason tries total that year, both also MLR records although the Chicago Hounds matched the record of 6 tries in a postseason game with their 21-45 victory over the NOLA Gold in last year’s Eastern Conference Semifinals.

A head-to-head comparison for the Championship can be found below, showing just how tight this clash is on paper. The New England Free Jacks look to have the advantage in the set piece (both scrums and lineouts), but concede far more penalties which the Houston SaberCats may want to consider exploiting with AJ Alatimu’s boot, given how few tries the Free Jacks conceded. Worth noting is the head-to-head record of these two sides. The Houston SaberCats have never defeated the Free Jacks, 0-4. The Championship game would be a great time to get their first!

Head-To-Head: Free Jacks v SaberCats

Hilsenbeck Hits One Hundred!

Although the game definitely did not end the way that he or the Chicago Hounds hoped, former German international turned aspiring USA Eagle Chris Hilsenbeck still racked up half of the Hounds’ 20pts in the Eastern Conference Final. The 33yo fly-half scored 22pts in Chicago’s two playoff games this year, and was sat on 99pts scored this season heading into this game. This means that despite the Hounds’ defeat, Chris Hilsenbeck became the first (and so far, only) player to pass 100pts scored in the 2025 MLR season, and that still deserves some praise. Congratulations, Chris!

Chris Hilsenbeck now sits 13pts ahead of the next highest scorer, Joel Hodgson on 96pts for the Utah Warriors. With only the Championship Final left to play in the 2025 Major League Rugby Season, Hilsenbeck is almost guaranteed to finish as the League’s top scorer in 2025, and he has a good chance of being the only player in the entire league with over 100pts this year. Only AJ Alatimu with the Houston SaberCats has a realistic chance of also scoring 100. He is currently sat 9pts away on 91, so while 100pts is achievable, MLR’s all-time leading playoff scorer would need to score 19pts in what would be a Championship Performance for the ages to pass Hilsenbeck.

As an aside, Alatimu would need 16pts to become the first play in MLR history to reach 100pts scored in the playoffs. Additionally, he is currently MLR’s 2nd highest scorer all-time with 497pts scored in total so is almost guaranteed to become only the 2nd player ever to pass 500pts scored in MLR following Sam Windsor, who remains MLR’s all-time leading scorer on 595pts.

The Top Scorers heading into the 2025 Championship, showing the gap between Hilsenbeck & Alatimu

Wrapping Up

As mentioned in the introduction, with only two games in the Conference Finals, standout stats for this week’s Midweek Milestones are hard to come by, resulting in a shorter than usual article. Despite that, this article still took a deeper look at the match-up for the 2025 Championship Game and highlighted MLR’s first (and only) 100+ point scorer this season: Chris Hilsenbeck! Check in next week for a mini Midweek Milestones from the final game of the 2025 Major League Rugby season, the Championship game at Centreville Bank Stadium in Rhode Island!

Thank you for reading the final regular season edition of NARDB’s Midweek Milestones! This series will continue through the postseason, where we are bound to get plenty of standout stats! If you like this series, please get in touch on social media or share this article to help highlight these achievements! If there’s anything that has been missed that you feel is worth mentioning, you can reach out to NARDB via the ‘Contact’ tab on this site. Alternatively, you can reach out to NARDB or James on social media: @MLRStats on Instagram/Threads, @JamDelay & @NARugbyDB on Twitter/X, and @JamDelay & @NARDB on Bluesky! NARDB can also be found on YouTube, at NARStats!

Finally, If you’re looking to get your hands on some of the new Macron merch for 2025 or to add to your jersey collection, visit shopmlr.com to get your hands on all that new gear, and remember to use code ‘MLRSTATS’ at checkout for 15% off your order!