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 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!

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.

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!