Category: Team News

Former MLR runners-up the American Raptors will not play Pro Rugby in 2025

NAR Database

James Deeley

The Runners-Up of Major League Rugby’s inaugural season will not play professional rugby in 2025. The American Raptors were a founding member of Major League Rugby and competed between 2018-2019 as the Glendale Raptors, and in the truncated 2020 season as the Colorado Raptors, before withdrawing from the league. The Raptors finished 1st in the 2018 regular season with a 7-1-0 record, before falling to the Seattle Seawolves in the Final by a score of 19-23. The following season, the Raptors finished outside the playoffs with a 7-7-2 record, and they held a 2-3-0 record in 2020 before the season was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Raptors held an all-time record in MLR of 16-11-2 across three seasons of competition, and are the only team in MLR history to have withdrawn from the league and continued to play elsewhere. So why did they withdraw from Major League Rugby? And what has changed between 2020 and 2024.

The Raptors in MLR

The Glendale Raptors were founded as an amateur side in 2006, winning back-to-back Pacific Rugby Premiership titles in 2015 & 2016, before professionalizing as a founding member of MLR in 2017, owned by the City of Glendale, known as ‘Rugbytown USA’, and playing out of Infinity Park. As mentioned, the Raptors had a strong inaugural season, winning 7 of their 8 games and advancing to the MLR Final before falling 19-23 to the Seattle Seawolves in San Diego. The Raptors won another 7 games the following year, but with an expanded format this was only good enough for 6th, and they missed the playoffs by 11pts. Rebranded as the Colorado Raptors, they looked to be a middling team again in 2020, with a 2-3 record through the first 5 rounds of the season before it was cancelled due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

At the beginning of April 2020, during what would have been Round 10 of the 2020 regular season, the Raptors announced their withdrawal from Major League Rugby. The team claimed that MLR was getting further away from it’s mission of developing American rugby players, and that the Raptors’ “greater responsibility lies in the development of American players…”. The team felt that with MLR’s expansion (that included the Canada-based Toronto Arrows) and corresponding increase in foreign players (unclear if this includes Canadians, still deemed domestic players by the league as of 2024), there would be fewer spots in matchday rosters for American talent, and they would better be able to develop American players outside of the MLR structure.

The obvious counter-argument to this is that you need Americans to play rugby in the first place in order to develop them, and bringing in talented international players raises the quality of the league and thus the profile of the sport in the USA, encouraging more fans to pick up rugby and allowing that development in the first place. Rugby in the USA is still very much a fringe sport even in 2024, but it’s come a long way since 2018.

Source: 9News.com
The Raptors outside of MLR

Following their withdrawal from Major League Rugby the Raptors rebranded as the Colorado XOs, focused on converting athletes of other sports to rugby players. In particular, football and wrestling have significant transferrable skills to the game of rugby. The XOs played a 10-game season through 2021 against a mix of club teams and fledgling MLR academy sides and had some success, finishing with an even 5-5 record with six players then picking up contracts with MLR sides including most notably, 2x Major League Rugby Champion Kaleb Geiger, who won the Shield with New York in 2022 and the New England Free Jacks in 2024.

The XOs lasted only from 2020-2021, before the team realised that it would always play a level below MLR as long as it was not playing in a professional league of their own. In September 2021, the XOs would rebrand once more, returning to the Raptors name with a completely different colour palate as the American Raptors that we’re familiar with today. At the time, Glendale City Manager Linda Cassaday stated that “The Raptors name has long been a symbol of rugby in Glendale”. The new-look Raptors played another exhibition season in 2022, the ‘Challenge Cup of the Americas’ featuring the reigning Súper Liga Americana de Rugby (SLAR) Champions Peñarol and Jaguares XV, as well as the UBC Old Boy Ravens Canadian club side.

In December 2022, SLAR rebranded to ‘Super Rugby Americas’ (SRA – no relation to Super Rugby) and announced that the Raptors would be competing in the predominantly South American competition from 2023. Ahead of their inaugural SRA season, the Raptors entered into a partnership with the Colombian Rugby Federation (Federación Colombiana de Rugby – FCR) and Los Cafeteros Pro, a Colombian professional team that competed in SLAR, but was not going to compete in SRA. The agreement was made so that Colombian players could still play high level rugby with the Raptors. It’s worth remembering that the Raptors withdrew from MLR in 2020 over concerns of increasing foreign players taking spots from domestic talent, only to enter into a partnership allowing 5 foreign players to play with the Raptors, who had 11 South American players on their 2023 roster.

Extreme travel distances coupled with facing essentially National Team development sides meant that the Raptors’ time in SRA would be tough. They finished 6th of 7 in 2023 with 16pts and a 2-10 record and the worst points differential in the league (-176), and finished 6th of 7 again in 2024 with 17pts and an even worse points differential (-221) despite picking up an extra win (3-9), after changing head coaches part-way through the season.

The Present Day

A combined Super Rugby Americas record of 5-19 and score differential of -397 cannot have made for good reading for the City of Glendale. On October 22nd, Maggy Wolanske published an article for Denver7 announcing that the raptors would not be playing professional rugby in 2025. Wolanske writes that “Glendale City Manager Chuck Line confirmed the city is shifting its focus from professional rugby to youth rugby, meaning it will not support the American Raptors.” Ironically, it seems that the reason the team withdrew from MLR may just have been the reason why professional rugby ended, at least for next year.

The article states that the City of Glendale confirmed to Denver7 that “it is more expensive to fund the American Raptors compared to youth rugby programs” which should come as no surprise when considering that the next closest SRA team to the Raptors was over 5,000 miles away in Paraguay. Line also said that the Raptors did not set the city back financially, however. He also stated that the City of Glendale is hopeful the Raptors can return in 2026 “along with several other North American teams competing in Super Rugby Americas.”

This last line is interesting, which other North American teams could be on the slate to compete in SRA in 2026? There have been murmurs that the Vancouver Highlanders might be interested (although that’s even further away than Colorado), or perhaps a team in Mexico may decide SRA is a better fit than MLR? We will have to wait and see, just as we’ll have to see if the Raptors will make another return to professional rugby in 2026. Another question to consider for now though: Although Glendale hosts a number of rugby events outside of the Raptors, including the famous RugbyTown Sevens competition, it last hosted an international match in July 2022 (USA 29-31 Chile), and without a professional team, can you really call yourselves ‘RugbyTown USA’?

Source: @superrugbyamericas on Instagram

Dallas Jackals Dispersal Draft Results

NAR Database

James Deeley

In an article from two weeks ago on this site, I mentioned that Major League Rugby had held the Dispersal Draft for Dallas Jackals players on September 25th, 2024 following the announcement on September 19th that the Jackals were withdrawing from the 2025 MLR season. We have heard nothing since then, and the MLR Trade Wire was only updated with trades from the 25th TWO WEEKS later, on October 9th.

While fans have been left out in the cold for the last few weeks, NARDB has obtained the results of this Dispersal Draft and is very happy to finally share these with you. The results of the 2024 Dallas Jackals Dispersal Draft are as follows:

No.TeamViaPlayer
1Sam Golla
2Makeen Alikhan
3Marques Fuala’au
4Nic Benn
5Via Old Glory DCVaughen Isaacs
6NOLA rugbyKyle Steeves
7Darius Law
8Sam Tuifua
9Jason Tidwell
10Dewald Kotze
11Jero Gomez Vara
12Tomas Bekerman
13Lucas Bur
14Ronan Foley
15PASS
16Old Glory DCJP Zeiss
17NOLA rugbyJavon Camp-Villalovos
18Jonah Auva’a
19Evan Conlon
20PASS
21Brock Gallagher
22PASS
23PASS
24PASS
25Martin Elias
26PASS
27Old Glory DCKieran Farmer
28NOLA rugbyPASS
29PASS
30Juan-Dee Oliver
31PASS
32PASS
33PASS
Results not confirmed – Players are not forced to sign with the team that selected them. Any Jackals players not featured above were either not selected, or opted out.

There are a number of things to mention regarding these results. They are not 100% confirmed, but have been verified with a number of sources so until (if) we hear something official, this is what we know. The MLR Trade Wire is notoriously slow to update, so I would not be surprised if we see a flurry of trades from the days immediately following the Dispersal Draft (confirmed to have taken place on September 25th, 2024). Indeed, three trades from the day of the draft were posted yesterday (October 8th), as mentioned at the start of this article.

Just because a player is picked by a team does not force that player to sign there. We have seen with previous dispersal drafts that players picked are often traded to more preferable teams (in the players’ mind). Whether this be because it is closer to a players’ current location or family, or a player feels that they may get more game time with another organization. It may also come from the teams, who could have just picked up players rights to use as assets to flip for Cap Space, draft picks, etc. We already have a player from this dispersal draft on the move. Argentinian prop JP Zeiss was picked 16th by Old Glory DC and, according to the Trade Wire, was traded from the Flags to the Seattle Seawolves on the same day he was picked by DC.

Source: MLR Trade Wire

There are also some things of note among the 33 (22 if you exclude the 11 ‘PASS’ selections). Firstly is the wasted pick by Rugby FC LA in selecting Lucas Bur 13th. Bur has already signed a contract to play with the Sitav Rugby Lyons in Italy, and it’s unlikely he will return for the 2025 MLR season. Anthem RC continue to stock up on promising young USA-eligible talents like Sam Golla (already a capped Eagle), Jason Tidwell, and Canada-born, UK raised USA U20 back row Makeen Alikhan. Alikhan joined the Jackals for the 2024 season on loan from Harlequins of the English Premiership, so it’s still unclear whether he will stay in MLR for 2025.

The Seattle Seawolves grab a pair of Canadian internationals in Brock Gallagher & Dewald Kotze, which is no surprise given their proximity to the border. Kotze will serve as a nice replacement for Peter Malcolm who announced his retirement earlier this year, and Gallagher earned his test debut for Canada in the Pacific Nations Cup in August/September. Gallagher also gave an explosive interview on The Fantasy Ruckers podcast, discussing just how in the dark the Dallas Jackals players were to the team’s troubles.

It’s a slight positive to see that although MLR is losing the Dallas Jackals, many of the players could return to MLR next season for different teams. It’s doubly good news to see that Darius Law, a Life University alum and the Jackals’ sole selection of the 2024 MLR Collegiate Draft, was picked up by the San Diego Legion and will have another chance to make the MLR in California. On the other hand, it’s surprising to see Canadian internationals Mitch Richardson & Liam Murray not selected. Richardson (and fellow Toronto Arrows teammate Nic Benn, selected 4th by the Utah Warriors) has gone through 2 dispersal drafts in as many seasons and although he missed the 2024 playoffs and the PNC after suffering an injury playing for Canada in the July tests, he deserves a spot on a MLR roster in 2025 should he want one. My understanding is that both Richardson and Murray opted out of the Dispersal process.

It’s been two weeks since the Dallas Dispersal Draft took place, and as with other Dispersal Draft before it, fans have had to rely on leaks to find out the results. In fact, we haven’t even received confirmation from MLR that it took place at all. Why? What’s so important about this Dispersal Draft (or any dispersal draft for that matter) that MLR has not made the results, or the date it took place, public? Could it be because MLR is aware that many of the players selected in this draft may not end up on the teams that selected them? Maybe it’s because MLR doesn’t want to raise the issue of a team withdrawing? The cynical view is that MLR just doesn’t care to tell you. It’s the off-season, teams (and probably the league) are running on skeleton staff and some players aren’t even in the country!

I care. Fans care. Especially Dallas Jackals fans that want to know where their favourite players might be playing next season. Especially those hardcore fans that are reading this far into an article in the depths of the off-season. It’s an awful situation to have a team withdraw and leave players and staff in the lurch, but the Dispersal Draft was an opportunity to look forward towards MLR2025, begin to get fans excited again, and show that MLR cares about the fans and players. With new signings beginning to be announced by the likes of the Seattle Seawolves and Old Glory DC, the public release of these results could have marked the start point of the hype train for next season. We all want to see this league grow and succeed, and all want to come along for the ride. Instead, it’s a missed opportunity that has damaged fans’ trust in the league.

Warriors Announce an Exodus in Utah

NAR Database

James Deeley

The Utah Warriors yesterday announced the departure of a whopping 17 players who will not be returning to the club for the 2025 MLR season. In the post, the Warriors organization thanked the group of departing players, and wished them good luck in the future. So who were the departing players, and what does this mean for the Warriors’ season in 2025?

Source: @utwarriorsrugby on twitter

Let’s start with who is leaving the Warriors. A good number of these will be household names to Utah fans, players like Caleb Makene (part of the leadership group), Mika Kruse, Franco van den Berg, Thomas Tu’avao, Onehunga Havili, and Paul Mullen. Others are newer arrivals to the Warriors, such as Kieran McClea, Nic Souchon, Lopeti Aisea, Robbie Povey (although he was a Warrior in 2020), and Louis Conradie, and others still may be perhaps less well known among fans due to playing fewer minutes but are no less part of the team, such as Mika’s brother Isaia Kruse, Noah Bain, Alesana Pohla, Jonah Dietenberger, Jesse Hamilton, and John DuPree.

There is no arguing that this is a huge amount of turnover for the Warriors, and it has got some fans wondering what is going on. I have seen some people online taking this announcement to ask whether money is an issue for the Warriors. This is likely a side effect of the Dallas Jackals pulling out last week, and doesn’t carry much weight. The Warriors announced a brand new HQ towards the end of last season, which they simply wouldn’t have done if money was a concern, and they hosted ‘WarriorsFest’ at America First Field for their final game of the season in front of over 10,000 fans. The team is strong, and isn’t going anywhere.

Source: @utahwarriorsrugby on Instagram

So why all the departures? For a rather unsatisfying answer, it could be any number of reasons. Let’s first be clear that just because they are leaving the Utah Warriors doesn’t mean they are leaving MLR entirely. It could of course have been the team’s choice to say farewell to these players in order to free up cap space, for example. If that’s the case I hope they all land on their feet, and we see them back around MLR before long. It’s also possible that foreign players want to return home after spending a year or two playing in the US (Makene, Souchon, McClea, Havili, etc.), or that the more fringe players may feel they can earn more game time elsewhere (Hamilton, DuPree, Bain, I. Kruse). This latter point is not even limited to fringe players: Franco van den Berg will be 28 at the end of the month, Mika Kruse is still only 26, and Paul Mullen is 32, the prime age for a front row! Could USA Eagles Kruse & Mullen be on Anthem‘s radar? It wouldn’t surprise me to see many of these names return to MLR on different rosters, but we must accept that at least some will likely be stepping back from playing professionally, and thank them for their time in MLR.

Whatever the reasons behind it, 17 players departing is a high number for any team. After missing out on the MLR playoffs by inches in 2023 however, the Warriors will have been disappointed with their season in 2024. This overhaul of the roster may be the ‘rebuild’ that Utah needs to return to the playoffs for the first time since 2021. It’s not like the roster is barren as is, fans will be delighted that the likes of Joel Hodgson, Paul Lasike, Frank Lochore, Phil Bradford, Dylan Nel, and superstar Michael Manson were not included on the graphic (of these, only Lasike is US eligible, and he’s 34). We’ll have to wait and see who the Warriors add as the off-season trundles on, and Head Coach Greg Cooper & Warriors CEO Kimball Kjar now have a huge chunk of salary cap space to play with, let’s see how they use it. It’ll be a very different looking Utah Warriors side in 2025, but there’s a strong core, and underestimate them at your peril.

Edit: Hours after this article was posted, the Seattle Seawolves announced the signing of Mika Kruse for the 2025 season, so we already know the fate of one of the Warriors’ departures!

MLR Holds Dallas Jackals Dispersal Draft

NAR Database

James Deeley

On September 25th, 2024, Major League Rugby held it’s 3rd dispersal draft in as many seasons following the news on September 19th that the Dallas Jackals were withdrawing from the 2025 MLR season, becoming the 5th team to withdraw from the competition since 2022.

The dispersal draft functions very similarly to the Collegiate Draft, with teams drafting in reverse order of where they finished in the 2024 season. As the bottom team during the season, Anthem RC drafted first and the Champion New England Free Jacks drafted 11th, with the order repeated until no more Jackals players are available. As with the Collegiate Draft, teams are free to trade dispersal draft picks and no doubt we will see these appear on the MLR trade wire in about a week.

Now, just because a player is selected by a team in the dispersal draft does not mean they will play for that team. For example during the Dispersal Draft for NY & Toronto last year, star winger Nate Augspurger (who had moved from San Diego Legion to the New York Ironworkers in what would’ve been a high profile move…if it were ever announced) was selected by the NOLA Gold, but traded to the Chicago Hounds shortly after. I would expect to see a flurry of trades in the weeks that follow this Draft, as teams and players pivot to find teams and locations preferable to them.

For Dallas fans waiting to hear where their favourite players are headed, or fans of other teams waiting to hear what new players their team has looted from the Jackals wreckage, I wouldn’t hold your breath. In the previous two dispersal drafts, no results have been published by MLR and instead fans have had to wait for the information to leak (which it inevitably does), or for teams to announce the newly acquired players themselves. While some may argue that this is because the events surrounding the need for an dispersal draft (a team withdrawing) is something that MLR does not want to highlight, it’s worth pointing out that in the past MLR has not even published the results of expansion drafts for new teams joining the league, such as Chicago or Miami.

The Dallas Jackals have not yet folded like the other four teams to withdraw from competition (Austin Gilgronis & LA Giltinis in 2022, and the Toronto Arrows and NY Ironworkers in 2023) and are instead “continuing to evaluate a controlling interest transfer”, which essentially means a sale. As a fan who has lost an MLR team, I remain hopeful that a sale can take place even if the rumor is that this would result in the team relocating. Losing the Arrows has decimated support for MLR in Toronto and I’m one of the very few Arrows fans who still follows the league closely. I hope this doesn’t happen in Dallas, and with MLR’s HQ there, it should be in their interest to bring a team back.

For now, we wait to see if the results of this draft are made public, either by MLR themselves, or another source. You can watch my reaction video to the League’s announcement below, or by clicking here.