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 again 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  |  24-23  |
|---|---|---|
| 2nd Occurrence |  SCORIGAMI! | 3rd Occurrence |
 26 – 36  2023 – RD 13 |  23 – 24 2024 – RD 12 | |
 23 – 24  2022 – RD 3 |
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!