Last week, NARDB posted a graphic and article analysing the overall number of cards shown per Major League Rugby season, identifying trends and offering explanations for the reasons behind them. That article can be found here. As promised, this is a continuation of that. We’ll be breaking down the most carded teams in MLR, both all-time and per season, while also highlighting some of the most carded teams and games in Major League Rugby history.
As identified last week, MLR put in place a new Match Official Management Team ahead of the 2024 season. This was a contributing factor to the huge increase in cards handed out this year and this article will focus on the 2024 season above others, as it is (obviously) the season most likely to influence how carding in the 2025 season will unfold.
The below graphic shows how many cards in total each active MLR team has received all time, as well as each team’s Yellow Cards per Game (YCpG) and Red Cards per Game (RCpG) and their most heavily carded seasons:
There are only two active teams in Major League Rugby that are averaging over 1.0 yellow card per game, and both of those enjoyed their inaugural season in 2024. The Miami Sharks averaged 1.13 YCpG, and Rugby FC LA lead the league in this unenviable category, with a huge 1.38 YCpG. Both Miami and RFCLA are head and shoulders ahead of the rest of the league, with the San Diego Legion sitting third with only 0.75 YCpG. This means that RFCLA average an additional yellow card than the Legion every 2 games, and Miami average an extra yellow every 3 games. In fact, with 3 red cards and a whopping 22 yellow cards for 25 cards total in 16 games, RFCLA‘s inaugural season this year was the most cards a MLR team has ever received in a single season.
The caveat to this is that with the Miami Sharks and RFCLA competing in their first MLR season in 2024, the sample size for these two teams is far lower than most other teams in the league. However, the Sharks and RFCLA were not the only expansion teams in 2024. MLR’s partnership with USA Rugby and World Rugby, Anthem RC, have the same sample size and ARC are sat right in the mid-table on a 0.69 YCpG. Nice. This is level with the 2024 regular season leaders the Houston SaberCats, and the 2024 Champions the New England Free Jacks. Anthem RC received literally half as many yellow cards as RFCLA in as many games. This will not be the record that Rugby FC LA’s players and coaches enjoy, and I’m sure their new coaching team for 2025 will be working hard to not see a repeat of this.
As mentioned in last week’s article, the 2024 Major League Rugby season saw a big jump in the number of both yellow and red cards shown compared to previous seasons. As a result, in addition to the 3 expansion sides, four active MLR teams received a season high in total cards in 2024. The San Diego Legion, NOLA Gold, Seattle Seawolves and Old Glory DC. A fifth team, the Utah Warriors, tied their most carded season with 14 yellows and a red, level with their 2023 season.
The Seattle Seawolves are worth mentioning for a couple of reasons. Firstly and most impressively, they have played the most games of any team in MLR, at 105 in total since 2018 and In that time they have only received 56 yellow cards in total. This is tied with Old Glory DC for the lowest YCpG among active teams, at only 0.53, roughly 1 yellow card every two games. Old Glory DC have received 4 red cards total, however. The Seattle Seawolves, remarkably, have never had a player red carded. They have gone 105 games without seeing a red card, the only other active team in MLR to have never received a red card is the Miami Sharks, who have only played 1 season. 56 yellow cards in 105 games is excellent discipline from the 2x MLR Champions. However, in 2024 they received the 2nd highest number of yellow cards among active teams with 20, and are just the 2nd team in league history to have been shown 20+ cards in a season (behind RFCLA, also in 2024). The Seawolves received 35.7% of every yellow card they’ve ever had in the 2024 season alone.
As mentioned above, Rugby FC LA were the most carded team in Major League Rugby in 2024, setting a new record for the number of cards received by a team in a single season. Despite the jump in cards in 2024, last season did not see the most carded game in MLR history. That honour goes to an infamous game between the Dallas Jackals and the Chicago Hounds in the final round of the 2023 regular season. This match, a nail-biting 28-29 victory for the visiting Hounds, saw a brawl shortly after half time, resulting in five red cards, two for the Jackals and 3 for Chicago. Add this to the 4 yellow cards the Hounds received throughout the match and this becomes the most carded game in MLR history at 9. Unsurprisingly, the 9-card punch-up contributed significantly to Round 18 of the 2023 season becoming the most carded round in MLR history with 13 yellows and 6 reds handed out in total.
Last week’s article went some way to explaining why (in theory) 2024 saw a noticeable jump in cards. That explanation can be found at the bottom of that article, and centres around MLR’s introduction of a Director of Match Officials, and a Match Official Management Team. As mentioned at the start of this article, the 2024 season, being the most recent, will give us the best idea of how the 2025 season may unfold, so let’s jump into how regularly each team was carded last season.
The above graphic shows the breakdown of cards for the 2024 Western Conference. This includes the Dallas Jackals, who unfortunately will not compete in 2025. Of the 180 yellow cards shown in 2024, 105 were shown to Western Conference teams, that’s 58%. Of those went to the top 3 most yellow carded teams, Rugby FC LA & the Seattle Seawolves (as mentioned earlier), and the San Diego Legion. Even the best regular season team in MLR, the Houston SaberCats, recorded close to 1 yellow per game (0.81 YCpG) and four of the six teams in the Western Conference had a YCpG over 1. The picture looks similar when we turn to red cards. A record 17 reds were shown in 2024, and 9 of those (53%) were shown to Western Conference teams. When remembering that the Seattle Seawolves received 0 red cards, that evens out to almost 2 reds for each of the five remaining Western Conference teams. Unsurprisingly, the most carded team in 2024 received the most red cards in the West, averaging around 0.19 RCpG, over double the Western Conference average of 0.09 RCpG. Is there something about the way that Western Conference teams play that causes them to be carded more? Possibly. If I knew the reason/s why this was the case I would probably have a much higher paying job, but I believe there is value in identifying these patterns.
Moving over to the Eastern Conference, after a quick look at the below graphic a couple of things should stand out almost straight away. Firstly, the lack of red (with one obvious exception). The Eastern Conference received 8 of 2024’s 17 red cards, with five of those going to the NOLA Gold. The Gold received more red cards than any other team last season and recorded a whopping 0.29 RCpG, significantly higher than even RFCLA. NOLA’s indiscipline counteracted the three teams in the East who didn’t see red (the Chicago Hounds, Miami Sharks, and the Champions, the New England Free Jacks), bringing the RCpG in the east to 0.08, essentially identical to the West.
The second stand out, when looking at the above a little deeper, should be the numbers of yellows shown to teams in the east. The Western Conference teams were all in the teens and above, but the East only saw one team in the teens: The Miami Sharks on 18. The remaining 5 teams received between 10-12 including Old Glory DC, a historically low-carded team (0.53 YCpG, level as lowest among active teams in MLR). Old Glory DC received 12 cards in total (10y, 2r), the joint-least carded team in 2024 with Anthem (11y, 1r), Chicago (12y, 0r), and New England (12y, 0r). with the Sharks collecting almost a quarter of the yellow cards in the east, and the NOLA Gold collecting almost two thirds of the reds, there’s room for improvement on both sides, and with the Gold bringing in a new Head Coach in Danny Lee for 2025, will we see a decrease in reds down in Louisiana? For the remaining four teams in the east, while I’m sure all coaching teams would rather see fewer cards shown to their squads, they’re being carded a whole lot less than the Western Conference, and are all below the YCpG average of 0.73 for the East.
As mentioned earlier and last week, while I have presented a theory as to why the number of red & yellow cards increased across the league generally in 2024, the reasons for certain teams being carded more than others could be down to ‘over-zealous’ individuals, it could be down to the way certain teams play (giving away more penalties generally likely results in more yellows from repeat infringements, for example), or it could even be down to the officiating team on the day. There aren’t numbers available (publicly, anyway) for which officials hand out the most cards, but if there is an interest in that then NARDB will happily dig into that. In the meantime, for any questions or comments, feel free to leave them under this article or reach out to @MLRStats on Instagram and Threads, or either @JamDelay or @NARugbyDB on Twitter/X.