Tag: Major League Rugby

Scoring and Parity in MLR: What are the Trends?

James Deeley

Coming into the 2026 Major League Rugby season after a catastrophic off-season in which the league contracted from 11 teams to just 6, newly appointed Co-President Alex Magleby frequently mentioned the level of parity and competitive nature of the competition. MLR clearly prided itself on the relatively high proportion of ‘1-score’ games. Prior to the start of the 2026 Campaign, Magleby mentioned multiple times that ‘almost 60% of games…with 10 minutes left, there’s only a 7pt differential or less‘, suggesting that 60% of MLR games remain within 1 score, and therefore competitive, with only 10 minutes to play. This figure is indeed accurate and was a testament to the competitiveness in Major League Rugby between 2018-2025, but that qualifier of ‘with 10 minutes left’ is doing a lot of work. This was said before this year’s season kicked off, but this was not the case in 2026.

In this latest season of competition, a losing bonus point (earned by losing within 7pts) was a rare commodity. Only 18.2% of games (6 in 33) saw a team earn a losing bonus point. So what happened? Is this the next step in a year-on-year trend that has seen margins of victory growing? Is it a case of scoring increasing in general and a sign that teams are becoming more offence-oriented and less focused on defence? Is this specific to MLR or is it in line with what is happening in other leagues around the world? That’s what this article intends to explore.

This is a rare NARDB Deep Dive that can only be given the time it deserves during the MLR Offseason. in 2024 we explored disciplinary trends and the numbers of yellow/red cards handed out in Major League Rugby, while last year we explored the possibility of a Cup Competition with Super Rugby Americas. With all the talk of the relative parity around the league heading into 2026, exploring the scoring trends seemed like an obvious choice. Does 2026 fall in line with these trends? Is it a blip? Or is it somewhere in the middle? Let’s find out.

Scoring Trends in MLR – Points Scored Per Game

The obvious starting point when tackling this subject is to answer the question: ‘Is Scoring in MLR Going Up?’. The short answer to that question is yes. Based on the average total number of points scored per game (PPG), the 2026 Major League Rugby season was the highest scoring season to date. Additionally, the PPG average has increased year over year for the last 3 seasons, with the last drop in PPG average coming in 2023. However, with such a jump between 2025 and 2026 it’s hard to argue that this is a ‘trend’ more than an anomaly for the 2026 season.

The graphic below (recently posted to the MLRStats Instagram page) displays the average PPG for each MLR season to date from 2018-2026. Rather than a steady increase over time, this is more of a shallow ‘U’ or ‘C’ shape. The first thing to notice is just how much higher 2026 is than previous years. Most seasons of MLR (6 of 9) have hovered around 51/52ppg, while 2026 is almost 10ppg higher on average, becoming the first season in history to eclipse 60ppg. Secondly, if scoring was regularly increasing in MLR one would expect the second highest PPG average to be recent, but that’s not the case. After 2026, the season with the highest PPG average was MLR’s inaugural season back in 2018, with 57.2ppg. This average then dropped to 51.8ppg in 2019 and remained around that mark up until this year, with a slight uptick in 2025.

The above table shows that scoring has increased in Major League Rugby for 3 consecutive seasons. Rather than the gradual, steady increase in scoring that one would expect from a general trend however, the vast majority of this 3-year jump from 51.9ppg to 61ppg was seen in 2026. 2024 was in line with previous seasons, 2025 saw a slight increase to 54ppg but was still far below the high of 2018, and 2026 jumps massively. Why?

Looking at the two highest scoring seasons in MLR history, even though they took place 8 years apart there’s an interesting coincidence. As well as being the highest scoring seasons, 2018 & 2026 are also the shortest seasons in MLR history. It’s the only two times where the regular season has been intentionally fewer than 16 games per team, and involved the fewest teams (7 in 2018, 6 in 2026). Both 2018 & 2026 consisted of just over 30 games in total, with the next lowest full season consisting of 75 games in 2019, more than double the number of games. Taking the average PPG of the first ~30 games of the season between 2019-2025 as a way of adjusting for season length proved inconclusive. the averages for 2021, 2024, and 2025 increased to 54.9ppg, 53.6ppg, and 57ppg respectively, but the averages for 2019, 2022, and 2023 fell to 49ppg, 48,4ppg, and 44,7ppg respectively.

Based on the above, it seems reasonable to conclude that fewer teams and a shorter season results in higher scoring. There is a hefty elephant in the room that hasn’t been brought up yet though: 2020. For newer fans to Major League Rugby that aren’t aware, the 2020 season was planned as a 12-team competition broken into two conferences of 6, with each team playing 16 regular season games followed by a 3-round postseason. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic had other plans. Just 5 rounds into the planned 17 round regular season, MLR rightly cancelled the season. Coincidentally, this put the total number of games played in 2020 at 30. Almost exactly in line with the total number of games in 2018 & 2026. Looking at the above graphic though, if a shorter season with fewer teams does indeed result in higher scoring, why was the average PPG of the 2020 season only 50.8? Lower than the season before and exactly in line with the season after.
Of course, the teams and players didn’t know that the season would be cut short in 2020. They were preparing for a 20 week slog of a season where they might play up to 19 games. If the season was always meant to be a lightning quick, 5-round sprint, it’s possible that the average PPG would’ve been much higher, but we’ll never know. The idea that fewer teams and a shorter season results in higher scoring still seems plausible. The 10-game 2026 regular season was even billed as a ‘sprint season’ which lent itself to higher scoring and less defence. With a similar season length likely on the cards for 2027, it’ll be very interesting to see where the PPG falls at the end of next season.

The Impact of the Referee Review System

There’s another factor that comes to mind when trying to figure out why the average scores per game were so much higher in 2026. Prior to the start of this year’s campaign in early 2026, Major League Rugby announced the Referee Review System (RRS) in place of the traditional Television Match Official (TMO) that’s commonplace elsewhere in professional rugby. NARDB posted a full breakdown of RRS shortly after it was announced that can be found here but in essence, RRS was intended to speed up the game by removing the ability for the TMO to intervene in decision making unprompted. This proved largely successful, however it was introduced alongside a team challenge mechanic and it was this that slowed games down in 2026 more than RRS itself.

RRS does seem to have had the desired effect, though. By Major League Rugby’s own figures and putting the team challenges to one side, there were a total of 44 referee initiated reviews in 2026 which were correct 86% of the time, averaging out to 1.33 reviews every game. This clocks in lower than the average number of TMO interventions per game in overseas domestic competitions (1.5-3) and test match tournaments (2-4). The exact number of TMO interventions in MLR during the 2025 season isn’t widely known, but for the purpose of this deep dive it’s fair to assume that it’s around 1.5-4 interventions per game. In this regard, RRS has reduced the number of interventions and sped up the game by removing most of the unprompted TMO checks, but is higher scoring a side affect of that?

It’s becoming a bit of a running joke in professional rugby that you can’t celebrate a try when it’s scored just in case the TMO spots something to overturn it. With RRS replacing that and referee-initiated reviews being far rarer, it’s possible, even likely, that fewer tries were disallowed in 2026 than they would’ve been if the TMO was still operating in MLR. It’s also possible that a number of penalties may not have been given or may have been reversed as well. Both of these factors would’ve brought the average number of points scored per game down, and with the 2026 average sitting an even 7pts higher than 2025, all it would take is an average of 1 fewer converted try per game to bring the 2026 average right in line with previous seasons.

It seems even more likely that replacing the TMO with the RRS led to higher scoring when you take into account that Major League Rugby didn’t fully implement the TMO for every game until the 2022 season. Prior to that it was used sporadically and for MLR’s resource-strapped inaugural season in 2018, the second highest scoring season in league history, it was used for a total of 1 game. The Championship Final. Does a shorter season with fewer teams and fewer/no TMO interventions lead to higher scoring? On paper, it appears so.

The Question of Parity

Of course, just because the scoring is higher does not necessarily mean that the games and competition as a whole is any less competitive. The easiest way to determine league competitiveness and parity is to look at the average winning margins for each Major League Rugby season from 2018-2026, displayed on the graphic below (also posted to the MLRStats Instagram page recently).

While higher scoring doesn’t guarantee less competitiveness and therefore parity, unfortunately that is what the numbers seem to suggest for the 2026 season. Including the latest campaign this year, the average margin of victory across MLR history is 11.5pts per game. From the graphic below, 6 of Major League Rugby’s 9 seasons fall reasonably close to this with a possible exception being the shortened 2020 season which saw a record low average winning margin of 10.3pts to go with a joint-lowest average points per game of 50.8 as shown above. The remaining 3 seasons saw average winning margins rise far higher than the league average, with 15.6pts in 2022, 14.7pts in 2023, and now an all-time high of 17.2pts per game in the 2026 season.

The above graphic also highlights the obvious relationship between winning margins and 1-score games, which are inversely correlated. Generally speaking, a larger average margin of victory results in a lower percentage of 1-score games, meaning that the games were decided by less than 1 score (between 0-7pts). This ‘within 1-score’ designation is a fairly reliable way to determine whether or not a game was competitive with a higher proportion of 1-score games suggesting that a season was more competitive, and a lower proportion of 1-score games suggesting lower parity that year.

To provide a baseline, across all 750+ Major League Rugby matches since 2018, just under half (47% – 355/755) have been decided by 7pts or fewer. This was a completely different story in 2026. Last season, only 18.2% of games in 2026 ended within 1-score (7pts or fewer). This is a significant drop from the 44.2% just last season, and even a drop from the 30% in 2023, the season with the previous lowest proportion of 1-score games. 18.2% during a 33 game season works out at nearly 1-in-6 games which, considering that there were only 6 teams therefore a max of 3 games per week, equates to roughly 1 game every 2 rounds that finished within 1-score. Losing bonus points were incredibly hard to come by last season, almost twice as rare as the all-time league average.

So the 2026 Major League Rugby season had the highest average points per game of any season to date, as well as the largest average margin of victory of any season to date. On the surface, it makes sense that higher scoring games lead to larger winning margins and 2026 definitely supports that, but that isn’t always the case. As already established, the 2018 season saw the largest average points per game prior to 2026 at 57.2ppg. If points scored per game was directly related to average winning margin, one would expect the average winning margin to be on the higher end as well, but it isn’t. In fact, the average winning margin of 11.8pts is only slightly above the all-time league average and that’s despite less than 40% of games ending within 1-score.
It also seems like a higher average margin of victory does not inherently mean that there are more points scored per game, either. Take the other two years that saw significantly higher than average margins of victory. In 2023 the average winning margin was 14.7pts and the year before in 2022, it was 15.6pts. Despite these margins being 3-4pts higher than league average, the PPG average for these seasons are right in line with all years between 2019-2024, at 51.9ppg in 2022 and 52.2ppg in 2023. Unlike in 2026, these two seasons saw winning margins increase while points per game stayed roughly flat, suggesting that competitiveness dropped in these years which is supported by the fact that both years hovered around 30% of matches being decided by 1 score or less.

Mapping Each MLR Season by Average Margin of Victory and Average Points Scored Per Game

Looping back to the top of this section, the numbers suggest that the obvious link between higher margins of victory and lower proportion of 1-score games appears to be the only consistent link. The table above maps out each season of MLR as well as the all-time league average. Lower scoring doesn’t necessarily mean that winning margins will be lower and games will be closer (look at 2022 and 2023), just as more points scored on average per game doesn’t necessarily lead to larger margins of victory (look at 2018). But the table above highlights just how much of an anomaly the 2026 was. Far higher than average scoring did lead to far higher than average margins of victory last season, and it’s a real anomaly as highlighted by the table above.

The cause of this seems difficult to explain, as it always is with any anomalous result. It could be that a shorter season with fewer teams threw up a smaller sample size of games, with 2026 having roughly a third of the number of games as some of the larger seasons in league history. It could be the implementation of the RRS over traditional TMO contributed to higher scoring. It could be a combination of the two as well as additional factors. Certainly, a significant additional factor is something that happened in 2026 that has never happened before in Major League Rugby: A perfect season.

Dominance: The Chicago Hounds Effect

When discussing the 2026 Major league Rugby season, more often than not conversations would have to be prefaced with something along the lines of ‘with the exception of the Chicago Hounds’. Dominance may not be a strong enough word to describe the season that the Hounds had this year. Chicago enjoyed utter supremacy all season long (with a possible exception to one game against Old Glory DC…), recording a perfect 10-0 season with try bonus points in every game, finishing with the maximum possible 50pts and continued that dominance into the postseason, recording the highest scoring playoff game ever followed by the highest scoring MLR Championship Game ever, to deservingly lift the 2026 Shield in front of a soaking wet home crowd in June.

The effect that the dominance of the Chicago Hounds had on the numbers for the 2026 season cannot be underplayed. Isolating the 12 Hounds games from their Shield-winning season alone shows that average winning margin for Chicago in 2026 was 22pts per game, almost 5ppg higher than the league average last season which itself was far higher than any previous season. To put this in perspective, the 2023 New England Free Jacks recorded a margin of victory of 20.4pts in 15% of games (massively skewed by a 80-5 win over Toronto…). The San Diego Legion went 15-1 that same year (but fail to claim the Shield), their average margin of victory was 18.5pts in 16% of games that year. For all the talk of LA Giltinis dominance in 2021, their average winning margin was 19.8pts in 13% of games that year.

Taking into account that the entire 2026 season was only 33 games total, it means that the Hounds’ average winning margin of 22ppg affected over a third of matches this year (36.4%). A higher average winning margin in a significantly higher proportion of games. Obviously that is going to skew the results somewhat and sure enough excluding the Chicago Hounds results, the remaining 21 games of the 2026 season showed an average winning margin of 14.5ppg, almost 3pts lower per game. This roughly 3pt swing moves the 2026 season from having the largest average margin of victory of any MLR season by far, to being the 3rd highest and in line with the 2022 & 2023 seasons. Still high, but not unprecedented.

Naturally, the Chicago Hounds effect isn’t limited to the average margin of victory. As explained earlier in this article, the 2026 season was, on average, the highest scoring MLR season in history with 61pts scored per game. In their 12 games this year, the Hounds scored 50pts or more 5 times and averaged 46.3ppg, meaning that their opponents only needed to add around 15pts to reach the 61ppg average. Sure enough, 9 of Chicago’s 12 games saw over 61pts scored. In fact, Hounds games averaged 70.5pts scored per game, with Chicago themselves scoring 65.6% of all points scored in games they played. Their average comes in at almost 10pts higher than the season average so just as with the margin of victory, the Hounds once again skew this data.
Again excluding the Chicago Hounds results, the average points scored in the remaining 21 games this year drops from 61 to 55.5ppg. As with the winning margins this is still higher than most previous years, but lower than the 57.2ppg of MLR’s inaugural season, and in line with the steady increase in scoring that the league has experienced since 2023.

Mapping Each MLR Season by Average Margin of Victory and Average Points Scored Per Game, including Chicago Hounds games in isolation, and the 2026 season excluding the Chicago Hounds.

To highlight just how much the Chicago Hounds’ perfect season had on scoring in 2026, the above table is almost identical to the one prior except with two extra data points: Chicago Hounds games, and the 2026 season excluding Hounds games. This illustrates just how dominant the Hounds were as well as just how much Chicago’s games skew the numbers for the 2026 season as a whole, dragging the season averages from unusual but not unprecedented, to a true outlier.

Excluding the Hounds games, the 2026 season would still be unusual in that it saw higher scoring and larger winning margins rather than one or the other, but there have been higher scoring seasons, and seasons with larger winning margins. It would be the combination of those two that would be unprecedented however, rather than the levels. Considering though, that a shorter season and implementation of the RRS over TMO likely also had an added effect on top of Chicago’s dominant season, and the mystery of 2026’s anomalous numbers seems solved.

However, not everything can be explained by Chicago’s perfect season. As previously mentioned only 18% of games during the 2026 season ended within 1-score, 6 of the 33 total matches. Only 1 of these 6 was a Chicago Hounds game which leaves 5 of the 21 remaining games ending within 1-score. This still only works out to roughly a quarter (23.8%) of games ending within 1-score. That’s higher, but still by far the lowest proportion of 1-score games in MLR history when broken down per season.

Is Major League Rugby the Outlier?

We’ve established that the 2026 Major League Rugby season was both the highest scoring year in league history, and had the largest average margin of victory of any season to date, but is MLR alone in this or is this reflective of larger trends in pro rugby competitions globally?

While there isn’t enough time to dig into all-time data for more established international competitions, the table below compares the 2026 MLR season to the most recent full seasons of other pro leagues around the world.

LeagueSeasonAverage Pts Per GameAverage Margin of Victory
202661pts17.2pts
2025/2659pts19pts
2025/2656.8pts18.3pts
2025/2647.7pts14.6pts
2025/2658.7pts18.7pts
2025/2651.3pts16.4pts
202658.6pts17.6pts
2025/2661.1pts18.2pts
2026
(Reg Season Only)		61.6pts16.4pts
202655.9pts16.4pts
202658.2pts16.0pts

This table covers a wide range of rugby competitions globally, from the pinnacle of club rugby such as the Top14, Super Rugby, the URC, and the PREM, to 2nd tiers like the Pro D2 and CHAMP Rugby, to feeder systems and leagues comparable to MLR such as the NPC, Currie Cup, and SRA. A massive caveat to this is that the Major league Rugby season is among the shortest seasons of all these leagues. The 33 game 2026 MLR season is only really comparable to the Currie Cup (31 games) in terms of number of games (therefore sample size). It was roughly half as long as the next shortest competitions (Super Rugby Americas at 59 and the 2026 NPC regular season at 70), over 100 games fewer than the likes of the CHAMP, Top14, JRLO, and almost 200 games fewer than the gargantuan Pro D2 at 229 total games.

Putting this rather large asterisk to the side though, the 2026 MLR season fits remarkably neatly with the latest seasons of other rugby competitions around the world, despite being a real outlier among previous MLR campaigns. The North American professional game is still at the higher end of scoring as one of only 3 leagues from the table above that recorded over 60ppg along with the JRLO (61.1) and NPC (61.6), but is still right around the level of 8 other overseas competitions surveyed. In fact, the 2025/26 Pro D2 and URC seasons are the outliers, with the mammoth French 2nd tier at 51.3ppg (roughly the level of most previous MLR seasons) and the URC coming in at only 47.7ppg, significantly lower than any other competition in this study. A quick dip into test rugby for comparison shows that the 2026 Six Nations had 54.8pts scored per game and the Rugby Championship had 56.8pts scored per game.

As one would expect, with fewer points being scored per game the average margin of victory in the URC was also the lowest among the 11 competitions surveyed for the table above. The 2025/26 URC season recorded an average winning margin of 14.6pts, almost a point and a half less than the next lowest competition, the Currie Cup at 16pts. Although the lowest among the competitions measured, it’s worth remembering that the URC’s 14.6pt average winning margin would still be higher than the 14.5pt average margin of victory from the 2026 MLR season excluding the Chicago Hounds, which itself was on the higher end of historic MLR campaigns. Instead, Major League Rugby’s highest ever average winning margin of 17.2pts puts it right in the middle of the 10 other professional rugby leagues around the world, as shown by the table below. Major League Rugby sits between the likes of the Pro D2, SRA and NPC (all 16.4pts) below it, and Super Rugby (17.6), JRLO (18.2) and CHAMP Rugby (18.3) above.

Even though the 2026 MLR season sits higher than the three comparable competitions on length and arguably quality, the Currie Cup, SRA, and NPC, it sits way below the the French and English top flights. The Top 14 and PREM led the way with an average winning margin of 18.7ppg and 19pts respectively. What’s more, the young 2026/27 seasons for the Top 14, PREM and even the CHAMP are already delivering some eye-watering results only a few rounds in, which suggests that this years numbers will be even higher. Just look at the Round 1 match between UBB and Racing 92, the Round 2 match between Pau and Bayonne, and the Round 5 clash between Racing and Perpignan in the Top 14. These may have been helped by the Top 14s variant on the bonus point system however, where rather than just scoring 4 tries to earn a scoring bonus point, a team must instead score at least 3 more tries than their opponent in a match. This system isn’t in use in England though, so can’t have contributed to CHAMP score lines such as the Round 2 games between Worcester and Rotherham or between Coventry and the Cornish Pirates, with Ealing also racking up the points against Hartpury in Round 4. A tier above in the PREM is a similar story, with the 48pt drubbing that Gloucester gave Quins in Round 2, or the truly insane scoreline between Northampton and Bath in Round 3, and that’s not even getting into some of the madness in the PREM Rugby Cup.

Comparing Major League Rugby’s average points per game and average margin of victory with international rugby competitions.

When combining the average margin of victory with the average number of points scored per game, the 2026 Major League Rugby falls quite neatly into the ‘strike zone’ of the most recent completed seasons of many professional leagues around the world. This can clearly be seen in the table above, with only the URC and Pro D2 falling significantly outside this zone. Unfortunately there isn’t room in this article to go into whether the latest seasons mapped on the above table were also dramatic increases on historical seasons in each of these competitions, and therefore evidence of a wider trend within rugby globally, but New Zealand’s NPC did post an infographic at the conclusion of the 2026 regular season that mentioned that the average PPG of 61.6 was the highest scoring regular season ever, just as it was in Major League Rugby. With the NPC celebrating it’s 50th year in 2026, 21 of those as a professional competition, this may be a hint that increased scoring and larger winning margins are not exclusive to MLR.

Conclusion: Is this a Problem?

It’s a fact that the 2026 Major League Rugby season was the highest scoring season in league history by average points per game, and that it recorded the highest average margin of victory with the fewest proportion of ‘1-score’ games in league history. A high proportion of 1-score games was something that MLR prided themselves on entering 2026 as a sign of a competitive league, as proven by how often MLR Co-President Alex Magleby mentioned it prior to the season. Increases in scoring and average winning margins led to a generally less competitive season and more lopsided games that became less entertaining to watch on the basis that they were effectively over long before the final whistle. Rugby is an entertainment product, and if that product becomes less entertaining it will be harder to attract new eyeballs to it. This, obviously, is a problem.

However, the 2026 MLR season was a unique campaign. The league contracted dramatically which resulted in a glut of pro-level players squeezed onto fewer rosters for a season that was significantly shorter than previous years. The introduction of the Referee Review System to replace traditional TMO almost definitely contributed to higher scoring with fewer tries called back in a smaller sample size of games than previous years, although putting a number on this effect is difficult. 2026 also saw the Chicago Hounds record MLR’s first ever perfect season, with their sheer dominance in nearly a third of all games this year skewing the numbers massively in what was probably the most significant contributing factor to this year’s campaign setting these all-time highs.

Major League Rugby will no doubt be aware of these numbers. The sweet spot for maximum entertainment is high scoring but relatively low margins of victory, which is difficult to achieve. The league mentioned throughout 2026 that the RRS was a work in progress, and will likely continue to be tweaked and refined at least into 2027 which could have an affect on the number of points scored. Though not impossible, it’s unlikely that the Chicago Hounds will continue to dominate the league to quite the same extent for two seasons in a row, which may have a significant effect on bringing the numbers more in line with previous seasons of MLR. Until the 2027 season is played however, it’s impossible to know.

In isolation and relative to previous Major League Rugby seasons, 2026 was a true outlier with higher scoring and fewer close games. When looking at the bigger picture and comparing this to other competitions around the world however, this season was almost the opposite of an outlier. While a record high for MLR, the average margin of victory in 2026 was right in the middle of the competitions surveyed and although the average points scored was on the higher end, it wasn’t anything ridiculous by the standards of overseas competitions. MLR will likely want to at least bring the average margin of victory down, but it appears that this isn’t a problem that’s unique to MLR. Both the winning margins and scoring in general are growing all over the world and there doesn’t seem to be a solution for it at present. It’s likely that all domestic competitions are keeping an eye on each other to see what each is trying out (for example the Top14-style scoring bonus point, MLR’s introduction of RRS, etc.) in the hopes of limiting these lopsided games and increasing the competitiveness of these domestic competitions.

To wrap up, MLR came out of a dismal 2025/26 offseason with a very different structure and outlook. They tried new things in 2026 with the introduction of RRS as well as the Team Challenge system, and that innovation is key. MLR need to keep innovating, tweaking, and testing things in the coming years in order to stay competitive both internally and externally. Competitiveness in general seems to be dropping around the world and no-one seems to have figured out how to resolve that just yet. Does the TMO need to be replaced or does the power of the lineout maul need to be checked? It will be fascinating to see where the 2027 MLR season lands, and how that compares with ongoing and upcoming seasons around the world.

Thank you very much for making it through this NARDB Deep Dive into Scoring Trends in Major League Rugby! Please feel free to get in touch if you have any thoughts on anything mentioned here or what subject you would like to see in the next Deep Dive. James and NARDB can be found on social media here:  @MLRStats on Instagram, 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 rugby gear be sure to visit rugbynow.com and use code ‘MLRSTATS’ at checkout for 15% off of your order!

MLR Player Movement Summary: September 7th – October 25th, 2026

James Deeley

There’s no denying that it’s been a very slow Major League Rugby off-season for player movement so far. Aside from the now routine migration of players from North America’s top flight to New Zealand’s National Provincial Championship, fans haven’t really been given a great deal to talk about in terms of transfers. You would’ve been forgiven if you were expecting a flurry of activity immediately after the draft but it seems like teams are staying quiet on signing their new draftees for the time being.

The good news is that player contracts for MLR expired at the end of September, and with the vast majority of the league on 1yr contracts for the 2026 season that means that all 5 teams are going to have a lot of work to do over the next few weeks and months to build their rosters for 2027. While we wait for that news to come out, there are a few sparse moves to talk about.

Welcome back to NARDB’s Player Movement summary article, covering each and every signing around Major League Rugby during the 2026/27 Offseason. These summaries aim to keep fans engaged in MLR and keep a bit of attention on North American rugby while fans wait for the games to kick off in the spring. It’s also the only place that provides a recap of every MLR signing on a regular basis, providing fans with an easy way of keeping up to date with both their team and the competition in the run-up to the 2027 season!

Intra-League Moves

Fans have waited almost 2 months since the 2026 MLR College Draft and 4 months since the end of the 2026 season, but finally on 21st October the first confirmed signing for the 2027 MLR season was announced when the Seattle Seawolves confirmed the signing of former NFL Defensive Tackle and California Legion front row, Justus Tavai!

California native Tavai grew up playing football, playing at the University of Hawai’i and San Diego State before signing with the NFL’s New England Patriots as an undrafted free agent in 2023. He and his two older brothers, Jahlani and J.R. Tavai, have also featured in the NFL, with Jahlani representing the Patriots in the Super Bowl in 2025. After Justus was cut from the Patriots roster, he joined the American Raptors organisation in Colorado, specialising in converting crossover athletes to rugby. He earned a spot on the Raptors roster for their 2024 Super Rugby Americas season and following the SRA campaign, he joined Belmont Shore RFC back in California. Belmont Shore served as a feeder team to Rugby FC LA for the 2025 MLR season and, with RFCLA dealing with an injury crisis in the front row, Justus Tavai was signed to the MLR side in April.

Tavai would earn 4 appearances for RFCLA in his debut season, starting once and adding two tries for 12pts total to help the team qualify for the post season for the first time in their short history. Tavai didn’t feature as LA fell to the Houston SaberCats in the Western Conference Semi-final. Following the 2025 season, RFCLA merged with the San Diego Legion to form one team representing the whole of California, and Justus Tavai was re-signed to represent that team for their inaugural 2026 campaign. In his sophomore season in MLR, Tavai tripled his appearances from the season before, appearing as a reserve in all 12 of the California Legion’s games in 2026, including both their semi-final victory over the Seattle Seawolves, and the Championship Final where they fell to the Chicago Hounds. Tavai added a third career try last season, and set career highs in both metres gained (74m) and tackles made (43).

As mentioned, Justus Tavai is the first confirmed signing of the offseason not just for the Seattle Seawolves but for any MLR team ahead of the 2027 campaign. This makes it difficult to say where he might fit into the Seawolves lineup, but at 6’3 and over 290lbs Tavai has proven himself as a reliable front row reserve on a team that made it all the way to the Championship Final, and Seattle fans should be excited about that!

Departures

Even though this article only goes back as far as late September, there was a move all the way back on September 10th. The DHL Stormers of the URC and Currie Cup competitions announced their lineup for a pre-season clash with the Bulls. Nothing unusual there. However, starting at scrum-half for the Stormers was former SaberCats and Seawolves 9, Andre Warner.

The Saffa-heavy Houston SaberCats announced the addition of Andre Warner back in January 2024 ahead of that year’s campaign, and the Cape Town native deservedly earned All-MLR First XV honours for his performance in his debut MLR season, scoring 8 tries in 15 games (all starts) and completing just shy of 120 tackles. He returned for a second season with Houston in 2025, recording another 4 tries in 12 games as well as 5 try assists to help the ‘Cats earn their first MLR Championship appearance, falling to the New England Free Jacks in Rhode Island.

After scoring 12 tries in 27 games over 2 seasons with Houston, the SaberCats’ shock withdrawal from MLR meant that Warner had to find another team to represent. He headed from Texas up to Washington State to join the Seattle Seawolves, who had a healthy South African contingent of their own in 2026. Warner added another 4 tries in 11 games as a Seawolf, also contributing 8 try assists and 13 defenders beaten in a solid season in the PNW, helping Seattle to finish the regular season in 2nd place before falling to the California Legion in the Semifinals. He was named both Seawolves Players’ Player of the Year, and Coach’s Player of the Year for his performance in 2026. Over his 3 seasons in MLR, Warner scored 16 tries in 38 games, starting 37 times and recording 13 try assists and over 250 tackles made (as a scrum-half!).

A couple of weeks after Warner appeared in the Stormers lineup, the team announced that Andre Warner had joined the team on a 6-month loan from September 2026 – February 2027 as part of the partnership between the URC side and the Seattle Seawolves. This suggests that Warner will likely be returning to Seattle for the 2027 Major League Rugby season which could make for quite a crowded scrum-half position with JP Smith and Solomon Williams.

The month of October kicked off with another departure and it was a biggie. Old Glory DC fans may want to skip over this one. The Flags squeaked into the postseason in 2026 but were without their talismanic playmaker Jason Robertson, who had quite rightly returned to his native New Zealand to be with his partner for the birth of their child. Robertson then linked up with Bay of Plenty and joined the Steamers for the 2026 NPC, where he’d previously played between 2018-19. On 1st October, the Yakult Levins Toda of Division 3 of the Japanese Rugby League One announced that they had signed Robertson for their 2026/27 season!

Robertson was playing for the Bay of Plenty Steamers in the Mitre 10 (now the NPC) when his signing was first announced by Old Glory DC in November 2019, ahead of their inaugural 2020 campaign. Even though that season was cut short by COVID-19 after only 5 rounds, DC were sitting on a 4-1 record with Robertson leading the league in scoring on 67pts in just 5 games, and 3 Team of the Week selections to boot. He kept up this lethal scoring with the league returned in 2021, recording his first 100pt season with 108pts in 14 games to finish 3rd league wide, also racking up a career high of 908m gained and 92 tackles completed. With a full MLR season under his belt, Robertson then headed to France having recorded a huge 175pts in just 19 MLR games.

Following stints with RC Narbonne in the Pro D2 and Aviron Bayonnaise in the Top14 between 2022-2023, in September 2023 Old Glory DC announced that Jason Robertson would be returning to the club for the 2024 MLR campaign, and he picked up right where he left off. Robertson appeared in all 17 games for the Flags in 2024, starting 15 times and recording over 500m gained in possession and career highs of 129 tackles made (his first 100+ tackle season) and 138pts scored which remains a single-season Old Glory DC scoring record through 2026. Unfortunately for Robertson and DC, he suffered a season ending injury mid-way through the 2025 campaign, and was sidelined for the rest of the year but not after adding 54pts to his career total in just 7 games played. Robertson returned to fitness in time for 2026 and it was like he’d never been gone. He was selected for the Team of the Week five times and finished 4th in scoring with 88pts in 10 games and a career high 3 tries to take his MLR total to 10 before heading back to New Zealand. For his efforts in 2026, Robertson was named to the All-MLR First XV (his second All-MLR selection), named Old Glory DC Players’ Player of the Year, and was the inaugural recipient of the MLR Comeback Player of the Year Award.

All in all, Jason Robertson has proved a prolific points scorer as well as a first-class playmaker in Major League Rugby. He finished the 2026 season with 455pts scored in his 53 game career with Old Glory DC, making him one of only 6 players to score over 400pts in MLR where he sits as the league’s 4th highest scorer. Robertson now takes his many talents to Division 3 of the JRLO, which runs from December 2026 to late May 2027 so rules him out of almost the entirety of MLR’s 2027 season. Congratulations, Jason! You will be missed in MLR and in DC especially!

For the Flags, following Simon Cross’ move to Director of Rugby Development and Player Pathways, they recently appointed Agustin ‘Cuca’ Cavalieri as their Head Coach, formerly of Anthem RC. Could Old Glory DC bring in a certain USA Eagles Fly-Half who played under Cavalieri for the Rising Stars in 2026? We shall see.

Typical for the 2026/27 MLR offseason so far where we have been drip-fed news and signings, the next departure wasn’t until a few weeks after news of Robertson’s move to Japan broke. On 14th October KHAOS Sport, the agency that represents Chicago Hounds back row and test capped Canadian Matt Oworu, announced that Oworu had signed with Biarritz Olympique in the French 2nd tier, the Pro D2.

Born in Canada, Oworu was raised between Canada and Zimbabwe, where he began playing rugby and represented both the Zimbabwe U18 & U20 sides, captaining the former at the famous Craven Week. He returned to Canada for University and joined Canada’s High performance program, the Pacific Pride, before entering the Canadian Sevens system. Oworu made his debut for the Canada Sevens side in Vancouver in 2021, and has since played over 100 games across 25+ tournaments for the Canada Sevens team. His performance for the Sevens Squad soon got the attention of the Canadian Men’s XV side, and Oworu was included in the squad for Canada’s 2022 summer tests, where he earned his test debut off the bench in a 45-0 win over Belgium. He’s earned 17 test caps for Canada to date, with his most recent coming in November 2025.

After committing to the 15s game in 2024, Oworu signed with the Chicago Hounds ahead of their 2025 campaign. He earned 13 appearances in his debut season, starting 3 times and completing just under 100 tackles to help the Hounds qualify for the postseason, where they fell to the New England Free Jacks in heartbreaking fashion in the Eastern Conference Final. Oworu came off the bench in both of the Hounds’ playoff games that year, and returned for a second season in Chicago in 2026. Oworu’s 2nd season in MLR was interesting. His season was significantly impacted by injury which ruled him out of a large chunk of the campaign (as well as national team selection), managing only 3 appearances on the year. He had a huge impact in those 3 games, however. Oworu started all 3, earned a MLR Team of the Week selection in Round 5 where he recorded his first of two MLR tries, beating 12 defenders on 130m gained to equal his 2025 total in 10 fewer games. As well as an offensive threat, Oworu averaged over 14 tackles per game for 43 in his limited appearances in 2026, helping the Hounds to record MLR’s first ever perfect season and ending the year as a Champion.

Matt Oworu now takes his talents to France where he joins the likes of fellow Canadians and MLR Champions Andrew Quattrin and Cole Keith (both in the Nationale), as well as the likes of Tyler Ardron (Top14) and Evan Olmstead (also Pro D2). The Pro D2 has probably the longest season in pro rugby with a 30-round regular season followed by playoffs running until early June. Unfortunately for Hounds and Canadian MLR fans, this all but rules Matt Oworu out of returning for the 2027 season, but is an fantastic opportunity for a talented player. Congratulations, Matt!

Oworu wasn’t the only Canadian making the trip across the pond however. In fact, he wasn’t even the only Chicago Hounds player to do it recently. On 21st October, a week after Oworu’s representation announced that he had joined Biarritz in the Pro D2, the Newcastle Red Bulls announced that they had signed 2026 MLR Forward of the Year Mason Flesch until the end of the 2026/27 PREM Rugby campaign! With the English top flight running to at least early June (before playoffs), this rules him out of returning to MLR in 2027.

Flesch is one of a number of Canadians heading to the UK for the 2026/27 season following Rugby Canada’s partnership with the 2nd Tier CHAMP such as former Arrows teammates Spencer Jones and Shane O’Leary, but his move is not part of this agreement and he is the first Canadian to sign with a team in the top flight PREM in 7 years. The Cobourg, ON native developed at the Al Charron National Training Centre between 2019-2021 where he played with both the Rugby Canada Men’s Development Academy, and the Pacific Pride. Flesch also represented the Canada U20s at the Junior World Trophy in 2019. He first stepped into professional rugby with the Toronto Arrows during the 2021 MLR season, where he earned 7 starts in 10 games during a tough season that the Arrows spent entirely on the road (due to COVID-19 restrictions). His solid debut season got the attention of the national team and in September 2021, Mason Flesch earned his test debut for Canada (#478) in a 34-21 victory over the United States in St. Johns, NL. Flesch would represent Canada’s lone MLR franchise for 3 seasons between 2021 and 2023, when the Arrows ceased operations. He earned 27 appearances in total for Toronto, starting 22 times and enjoyed a breakout year in a another tough season for the Arrows in 2023, when he started all 14 of his appearances, made over 100 tackles, and gained over 400m in possession.

Following the demise of the Toronto Arrows organisation, Flesch was selected by the Chicago Hounds in the dispersal draft along with former Arrows Captain Lucas Rumball. He made an immediate impact in his first season with the Hounds in 2024, starting 13 of his 14 appearances during the regular season and scoring his first 3 MLR tries. He started both of the Hounds playoff games that year as they advanced to the Eastern Conference Final where they fell to the Free Jacks. Flesch finished his first year with the Hounds with career highs across the board, gaining over 500m in possession and completing over 130 tackles to earn a spot in the All-MLR Second XV. The big 6’5 forward continued to improve in 2025. Although he took a step back in metres gained, he doubled his try total from the season before, scoring 6 times in 13 games during the regular season to ensure the Hounds made the playoffs, where he once again started both of their postseason games, but where Chicago once again fell to the Free Jacks in the Eastern Conference Final, this time in heartbreaking fashion. Along with his 6 tries Flesch set a career high of 165 tackles made and was named to the MLR Team of the Week 3 times.

Mason Flesch has just continued to get better and better, as shown by his incredible 2026 season. A lethal ball runner and potent offensive weapon, Flesch scored 8 tries in 9 games as part of a formidable Chicago Hounds side that romped through the regular season. He would add another try in each of their playoff games, this time lifting the 2026 MLR Shield to cap off the league’s first perfect season, 12-0. Flesch finished the year with a ridiculous 10 tries in 11 games, scoring more tries in 2026 than he had in his 5 previous seasons combined! With 100+ tackles made for the 4th consecutive season to boot, Flesch hoovered up the awards. He was named Chicago Hounds Player of the Year and Players’ Player of the Year, earned his first All-MLR First XV Selection, and capped it off by being named MLR Forward of the Year for 2026.

Flesch has been a standout for club and country for a while. In the international game, Flesch has started every game for Canada in over a year and has earned 27 test caps to date including their most recent win over the USA in Japan, in which he scored a try. With Canadians now counted as international players in MLR, Flesch was one of a handful of Canucks that is good enough to warrant using a precious foreign player spot on, but it was becoming obvious that he was good enough to play in some of the top leagues in the world. The question was where he would end up, and now we have our answer! The Newcastle Red Bulls are looking to make a mark on the PREM this season, and hopefully Mason Flesch will be a key part in their success. At only 26, he has a lot of rugby left to play. Congratulations, Mason!

Wrapping Up

Given the whirlwind that was the 2025/26 MLR offseason, it seems hard to believe that MLR fans have gone roughly two whole months with only 5 moves to discuss but as mentioned in the intro, the 2026/27 offseason is proving very slow to get started on player movement. There have been a handful of test capped Canadians that have found contracts in England thanks to a partnership between the English 2nd Tier CHAMP Rugby and Rugby Canada, but these Canucks were not current MLR players in 2026 so haven’t been included in this article. Nevertheless, this is great news for fans of Canadian rugby and NARDB wishes them the very best of luck as roughly the same amount of Canadians that played in MLR in 2026 are now playing pro in England!

These Canadians looked farther afield than MLR for professional contracts in large part due to MLR’s reclassification of Canadians as international players as part of a shift towards a larger focus on US talent. This had a massive effect on the number of Canadians playing in MLR in 2026 and looks set to continue into 2027 as a pair of the Chicago Hounds’ Shield-Winning Canadians found spots overseas with Matt Oworu signing in Biarritz, and MLR Forward of the Year Mason Flesch joining the Newcastle Red Bulls in the PREM. Another international player, MLR’s 4th highest scorer Jason Roberston, heads to Japan so Old Glory DC will be without their talismanic playmaker next season. Robertson won’t be adding to his career total of 455pts scored for the Flags, at least not in 2027.

The rest of this articles news comes from the Seattle Seawolves. Fans will probably be relieved that Andre Warner’s move to the Stormers in the URC was confirmed as a 6-month loan as part of the agreement between the two sides. Warner’s likely return in 2027 gives newly drafted Seawolf Solomon Williams another mentor along with JP Smith. Seattle were also the first MLR team to start announcing their roster for the 2027 season with the addition of California Legion front row Justus Tavai, fresh off a Championship run! Fingers crossed that we’ll hear about a few more Seawolves signings in this coming week, as well.

Thank you as always for giving this article a read and making it all the way to the end! If you enjoyed it, please share it so other fans can stay informed of all the player movement around Major League Rugby. If there are any moves that were missed, please let us know by tagging us on social media or sending them our way directly. James and NARDB can be found on social media here:  @MLRStats on Instagram, 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 rugby gear be sure to visit rugbynow.com and use code ‘MLRSTATS’ at checkout for 15% off of your order!

MLR Player Movement Summary: August 10th – August 30th, 2026

James Deeley

The previous NARDB Player Movement article mentioned that moves might be few and far between, at least until after the 2026 MLR College Draft when teams start to sign their new draftees to deals for 2027. That certainly seems to have been the case, with signings of 2026 MLR names very sparse through the month of August. Of course, following the demise of Anthem RC after their World Rugby funding dried up, a 5-team competition is going to have less movement in general than previous off-seasons. Hopefully one day we’ll get back to double digit teams and 3/4 page Player Movement summaries but for now, we can spend more time on each of the few moves there have been so far this off-season.

Welcome back to NARDB’s Player Movement summary article, covering each and every signing to, from and within Major League Rugby during the 2026/27 Offseason. These summaries aim to keep fans engaged in MLR and keep a bit of attention on North America’s top rugby competition while fans wait for the games to get rolling again in the spring. It’s also the only place that provides a recap of every MLR signing on a regular basis, providing fans with an easy way of keeping up to date with their team in the run-up to the 2027 season.

Because of low volume, this Player Movement Summary covers every move over a 3-week period from August 10th to August 30th, but will not cover the Draft. All information on the 2026 MLR College Draft can be found here, and if/when teams officially sign their new draftees, they will be covered in future editions of this article series. As always, a summary graphic for all player moves covered in this article can be found below:

Short-Term Departures

As you may have noticed from it’s title, this article covers all moves from August 10th. However, the first sighting of this period wasn’t until the 18th when French club Oyonnax announced that they had signed Chicago Hounds tighthead prop Charlie Abel as a medical joker for the first chunk of the 2026/27 Pro D2 season.

The 34yo Australian is enjoying a career year. He earned four Team of the Week selections and scored 3 tries in 10 games (8 starts) for the Chicago Hounds in 2026, starting both of their playoff games to help the team to their first MLR Shield off the back of the first perfect season in MLR history. For his excellent 2026 season, Abel was named to the All-MLR First XV. Not long after, Abel was called up to the USA Eagles squad for the North American leg of the World Rugby Nations Cup where he earned his test debut as Eagle #604 in a victory over Spain.

Although new to test rugby, Charlie Abel definitely isn’t new to MLR. In fact, 2026 wasn’t even his first Shield! Abel first entered the competition with the LA Giltinis ahead of their inaugural season in 2021. He started 14 of his 16 appearances for the Giltinis, and was LA’s starting loosehead as they defeated Rugby ATL 31-17 in the Championship Game, claiming the Shield in their very first season. Abel would earn another 15 appearances (8 starts) for LA in 2022, before the team was disqualified prior to the post-season, and ultimately folded. As one door closed however, another opened. Abel was selected by the Chicago Hounds in the Expansion/Dispersal draft, and has played in green & white ever since.

Abel has been a stalwart of the Chicago team since their very first season, helping the expansion side through the rough early days to an unbeaten Championship. He’s earned over 50 appearances for the Hounds, and is sat on 85 total games in MLR with 59 starts and 11 tries scored, 7 of which have been for Chicago. He’s also gained over 1,500m in possession in his MLR career so far, and has racked up 732 tackles made, finishing with over 100 tackles in 5 of his 6 seasons. To relieve Hounds fans, Abel’s contract with Oyonnax does not rule him out a return to MLR for 2027. He’s playing in France due to an injury to regular prop Ali Oz, who is expected to be sidelined for several months with a hamstring injury. There’s plenty of time for Oz to recover and Abel to return to MLR for next season, but in the meantime it’s a great opportunity for a US-capped prop to stay sharp in what is probably the best 2nd tier competition in the world. Congratulations, Charlie!

Full Season Farewells

While Charlie Abel’s French adventure is a short term deal that does not rule him out from a return to MLR in 2027, there were a couple of departures that likely will make it tricky for players to play pro rugby in North American next year. On 21st August, newly promoted English Championship side Rotherham announced their starting line-up for a pre-season fixture with Oundle RFC. Included in the starting XV was a name familiar to Seattle Seawolves and Canada fans: Dewald Kotze. The South African born Alberta native was announced by the side the following day for their 2026/27 Championship campaign which runs from mid-September 2026 to the end of May, 2027.

Kotze has earned over a dozen test caps for Canada since his debut against Romania in 2024, with the most recent coming in Canada’s Nations Cup fixtures back in July. He entered MLR with the Dallas Jackals for their inaugural season in 2022, starting 3 of his 4 games in his debut season, before becoming an regular starter the following year. Over the next two seasons with the Jackals, Kotze started 26 of his 32 games to help turn the team from a 0-16 team in 2022 to playoff contenders in 2024. He scored 14 tries in total including a career high of 11 in 2024 when he finished level with NOLA’s Taniela Filimone as MLR’s 3rd highest try scorer that year. The bulk of these 11 tries came in one game against the Seattle Seawolves, where Kotze scored an incredible FIVE tries, which remains an MLR record.

Although the Seawolves scraped a victory in that game, Kotze clearly impressed them. After the Dallas Jackals withdrew from the competition, Seattle picked him up and he played with the Seawolves for a further two seasons. Kotze would start 15 of his 26 games for the Seawolves, scoring an additional 5 tries to take his career total to 19 tries in 62 games (44 starts). He passed 500 career tackles in MLR during the 2026 season, averaging 9 tackles per game across his career which rose to 12 per game this season. Kotze has recorded over 100 tackles in 5 of his 6 MLR seasons, and gained over 600m in possession. Now that Canadian players are no longer considered domestic in MLR, it’s possible that Kotze traded in some uncertainty for a full season contract in England, and Canadian fans should be happy to see a regular international getting the opportunity across the pond. He links up with former New England Free Jacks scrum-half and 2x MLR Champion Cam Kelemeti with the Titans. Very best of luck, Dewy!

A few days after Rotherham announced the signing of Dewald Kotze, the announcement came that another MLR-er would be heading to Yorkshire. On 26th August, fellow Yorkshire based CHAMP rugby side the Doncaster Knights announced that they had signed former MLR draftee and 2026 Old Glory DC Young Player of the Year Aidan King for their 2026/27 campaign! The US-born Australian raised back row heads to the UK after a pair of solid seasons in Major League Rugby.

Having grown up playing rugby in Queensland, Aidan King headed back to the US for school, enrolling at Penn State. Upon his graduation, he declared for the 2024 MLR College Draft and was selected in the 1st Round, 6th overall by the NOLA Gold, and was included on their MLR roster ahead of the 2025 season. Aidan King could’ve easily been named the MLR Rookie of the Year for his performance during hid debut season. In a tough year for the Gold, he was a standout. King appeared in 14 of NOLA’s 16 games in 2025, starting 9 times and averaging 11.8 tackles per game for a total of 166 on the season, also adding his first pro try and over 100m gained in possession. Unfortunately this was his only season in New Orleans, as the team withdrew from MLR in the offseason, adn King headed northeast to join Old Glory DC for 2026.

In his sophomore season, King kept up his reputation as a reliable tackler, holding his own against other DC tackle machines Ben Bonasso and Cory Daniel, recording 113 tackles in 9 games, starting all 9. This actually took his tackle per game average over 12, sitting on a huge 279 in just 23 games (18 starts). His ball carrying also improved, passing 200m gained on the season for an average of 23 per game and beating 13 defenders, he was named as the Old Glory DC Young Player of the Year for his efforts. King now joins up with fellow MLR alum Ben Sugars at the Knights where US fans should keep a keen eye on his minutes, even if it’s unlikely that he’ll return to MLR for 2027. Congratulations Aidan, and best of luck in the Championship!

Sandwiching those two moves to the Championship was the announcement from Red Hurricanes Osaka on the other side of the world, who announced that they had signed Anthem RC lock Will Sherman for the Japan Rugby League One D2 season! The Utahn lock was a standout at UCLA, where he was named Collegiate All-American as well as both UCLA Players’ Player and Forward of the Year before a busy summer where he toured South America with the USA U23s, and declared for the 2025 MLR College Draft before heading down to Sydney to play with Randwick in the Shute Shield. In that draft, he was selected 1st overall by Anthem RC, becoming the 2nd UCLA Bruin to be drafted 1st overall after Eric Naposki in 2021.

Unsurprisingly, after going 1st overall Will Sherman was signed to the Anthem RC MLR squad for the 2026 season where he appeared in all 10 games for the rising stars, starting 6 times. He started in Anthem’s first game of the season against the California Legion, completing 19 tackles to help the team record their first ever victory, and scored his lone MLR try off the bench during their second (and unfortunately, final) victory of the year over the Seattle Seawolves a few weeks later. Although this was only his first season of pro rugby, Sherman’s performance was good enough to earn him a contract overseas in a league that boasts the likes of former MLR standouts Reece MacDonald, Dylan Nel, and Frank Lochore.

With Anthem no longer operating after the 3 years of funding from World Rugby expired at the end of the 2026 season, the entire Rising Stars roster is looking for playing opportunities for next season. Sherman has found that opportunity all the way in Japan. Although the JRLO has a tendency to bury international players to limited minutes, Sherman is the first #1 pick in MLR history to play overseas instead of in MLR, with the JRLO D2 season running from December 2026 to May 2027. Just like Dewald Kotze, this doesn’t leave a lot of time for Sherman to return to MLR for the business end of the 2027 season, but it’s a possibility. US fans may be disappointed not to see Sherman in MLR next season, but should be happy that a homegrown talent has earned a contract overseas. Congratulations, Will!

It appears that Will Sherman isn’t the only big MLR forward headed to Japan. On 22nd August, the Tokyo Gas Blue Flames in Division 1 of Japan’s Top East League posted their matchday squad for a pre-season clash with the Daigas Struggers. Included in the reserves for that match was New England Free Jacks lock and test capped Canadian Piers von Dadelszen, who earned his team debut a week later against the AZ-COM Maruwa Momotaro’s.

The BC native earned his test debut for Canada in 2022 while he was attending the University of Oxford in the UK, and was signed by the Free Jacks in late 2023 ahead of the 2024 MLR season. Von Dadelszen was a regular in the New England lineup in his debut season, earning 17 appearances starting 11 times that year. He added two tries and gained just shy of 250m in possession, completing over 120 tackles on defence to help the Free Jacks lift their 2nd Shield in a row in 2024. For his efforts that season, he was named the 2024 Free Jacks Rookie of the Year. Von Dadelszen returned for a second season with the Free Jacks in 2025 and remained a high impact player for the defending champions. He started 15 of his 16 games that year and completed a career high 145 tackles as he helped New England to lift their 3rd successive MLR Shield. The 2nd in as many seasons for Piers von Dadelszen.

Piers von Dadelszen was one of the few Canadians to return to the Free Jacks for 2026, as MLR removed the domestic status from Canadian players which drastically reduced the number of Canucks in the league, and forcing New England to pivot away from their Canadian core. As a result, the 2026 season was tough for the team. they missed out on the playoffs with a 3-7 record, finishing 5th. Nevertheless, von Dadelszen continued to be a regular in the Free Jacks squad, starting all 8 of his appearances. For the 3rd season in a row, he recorded over 100 tackles made, averaging an impressive 14.3 tackles per game with 114 in his 8 matches.

Internationally, Piers von Dadelszen started every single game for Canada in 2025 as well as the first two matches of their Nations Cup campaign in 2026. In fact, Canada’s victory over Zimbabwe in their final test of the July series was the first game that didn’t feature von Dadelszen in the lineup since their clash with Romania in November 2024. Unlike other moves in this article, von Dadelszen’s move to Japan doesn’t rule him out of returning to MLR for the 2027 season. The Japanese Top East League regular season runs from September to December, with the playoffs (the National Amateur Championship) running from December to late January. With MLR likely to start in March 2027, he has plenty of time to return to Quincy, should he re-sign at all. As a final point, he isn’t the only MLR name on the Blue Flames roster. He’ll link up with former San Diego Legion man Rhian Stowers, as well as former Toronto Arrows and Houston SaberCats centre, Tautalatasi Tasi. Best of luck, Piers!

Wrapping Up

It’s been another quiet 3 weeks in terms of player moves. Only 5 moves were confirmed, all from MLR to elsewhere in the world with only a couple of these allowing for a return to MLR for the 2027 season. Obviously, the big moves into MLR during this period was the 2026 College Draft, however until the 5 remaining MLR teams confirm that they have signed their new draftees for the 2027 season, they won’t be covered in these Player Movement articles. NARDB has all the details of the 2026 MLR College draft on a dedicated page which can be found here.

Thank you as awalys for giving this article a read and making it all the way to the end! If you enjoyed it, please share it so other fans can stay informed of all the player movement around MLR so far! If there are any moves that were missed, please let us know by tagging us on social media or sending them our way directly. James and NARDB can be found on social media here:  @MLRStats on Instagram, 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 rugby gear be sure to visit rugbynow.com and use code ‘MLRSTATS’ at checkout for 15% off of your order!

MLR Player Movement Summary: July 20th – August 9th, 2026

James Deeley

The last edition of NARDB’s Player Movement Summary series was an ‘NPC Special’ with 8 of the 9 moves from mid-July involving players heading down to New Zealand for the 50th year of the National Provincial Rugby competition. The NPC has long been a competition of choice for MLR teams to recruit from and although the numbers of NPC players in MLR fell in 2026 after the league shifted to a more domestic focus, there was still a lot of movement between the two competitions. Now that the NPC has started and the squads are known, there’s been a lull in terms of player moves, but that’s not to say that there was no movement!

Welcome back to NARDB’s Player Movement Summary covering the three weeks from 20th July to August 9th, 2026! The aim of this series is to keep fans informed of all the players entering Major League Rugby, heading overseas after playing here in 2026, or moving to a new team within MLR, so that there are no surprises when the 2027 campaign kicks off. As always, the summary graphic is right here:

Departures – NPC

The first few moves covered in this edition of NARDB’s Player Movement articles involves the final few players joining NPC squads, as a number of teams revealed their squads closer to the 30th July start date. On 21st July, the Wellington Lions revealed their full squad for the 2026 campaign, which included MLR veteran and newly crowned Champion Jake Turnbull for his first season in the competition after nine years of Major League Rugby!

Born and raised in Australia, Turnbull moved to Denver, CO in 2015 and played with the Glendale Raptors before they professionalized and joined MLR. He represented the Denver Stampede in the short-lived PRO Rugby competition in 2016 before returning to Australia to earn a Bachelor’s Degree in Sports Business, Sport and Exercise from the Australian College of Physical Education. When Major League Rugby came along, Turnbull signed with the Houston SaberCats ahead of the inaugural season in 2018, and has played in every season of competition to date!

Turnbull is one of only 2 players in MLR history (with Sean McNulty) to have represented six different franchises. He earned 20 appearances (6 starts) with Houston between 2018-2019, then joined Old Glory DC for the truncated 2020 season but appeared in all 5 games (3 starts) before joining the Austin Gilgronis for 2 seasons between 2021-2022, starting 12 of his 26 games including 7 of his 14 appearances in 2022 where he scored a career high 5 tries. Following the disqualification of the Gilgronis in 2022, Turnbull headed to Seattle for the 2023 season, earning a career high 18 appearances (6 starts) in the PNW. For 2024, the Seawolves traded Turnbull to the newly formed Anthem RC in Charlotte, captaining the team for their first season where he earned a career high 13 starts in 14 games. Over 2 seasons with the Rising Stars, Turnbull started 23 of his 28 games, appearing in all but 4 matches for Anthem during that time. Moving into his 9th season in 2026, Turnbull joined the Chicago Hounds for their dominant Championship season, starting 2 of his 6 games during the shorter season, including his 100th MLR appearance in Round 9, a big victory over the Seattle Seawolves. He appeared in both of the Hounds’ playoff matches en route to lifting the Shield after a perfect 12-0 season in Chicago.

Jake Turnbull is just the 7th player in MLR history to reach 100 games played in the competition, now sitting on 103 games in total, starting 52 times and scoring 14 tries on over 1,900m gained in possession and 730 tackles completed. Strong numbers from a prop. Internationally, Turnbull is a test capped USA Eagle, earning his debut as Eagle #562 in September 2023 again Spain, he has earned 14 caps for the USA to date, with the latest coming in November 2024, also against Spain. Best of luck in New Zealand, Jake!

From Wellington on the south side of New Zealand’s North Island to Albany, the home of North Harbour on the north side (surprise surprise). On 22nd July, North Harbour revealed their own 2026 squad which included MLR’s Top Scorer from the 2026 season, Coby Miln!

Born in New Zealand, Miln has spent a significant portion of his playing career overseas, representing the Munakata Sanix Blues in Japan, Randwick and Warringah in the Shute Shield competition in Australia, and the Western Force in Super Rugby, also based in Australia. As many MLR fans know however, most recently he was marshaling the California Legion as their go-to fly-half in 2026. He started all 10 regular season games for the Legion this year, scoring 95pts to help them qualify for the playoffs in their first season post San Diego/LA merger with a 5-5 record in 3rd. Miln added a massive 35pts in just two postseason games that included a 23pt haul in their Semifinal victory over the Seattle Seawolves on the road which marked a new MLR record for the most points scored by a single player in a playoff game.

Miln added another 12pts in the Championship Game, but the Legion fell to an utterly dominant Chicago Hounds side. With 130pts in total in just 12 games and a success rate from the tee of almost 86%, he was named to the All-MLR Second XV in his debut season in North America, and now heads back to his native New Zealand for his first season in the National Provincial Championship where he will join MLR alumni Jed Melvin (New England Free Jacks 2024-25) and Oscar Koller (Anthem RC 2024). Best of luck, Coby!

Departures – Rest of World

Heading briefly away from New Zealand to the UK. On 24th July English club Ampthill RUFC announced that they had signed California Legion back row Ed Timpson for their 2026/27 CHAMP Rugby season. Born and raised in the UK, Timpson played rugby with the University of Nottingham before heading to Sydney after his graduation where he joined the Norths in the Shute Shield for a year before returning to the UK and playing in the Premiership Rugby Cup with the Bristol Bears in 2024/25.

Ed Timpson headed stateside ahead of the 2025 MLR season, signing with Rugby FC LA where he started 13 of his 15 appearances under Stephen Hoiles, scoring an impressive 7 tries on over 350m gained and recording 164 tackles made to earn the RFCLA Forward of the Year title for the 2025 season. Timpson remained in California following the merging of RFCLA with the San Diego Legion and represented the new look California Legion during the 2026 season. He appeared in 9 of the team’s 10 regular season games, starting 8 times and scoring a pair of tries to help the team finish 3rd with a 5-5 record and qualify for the playoffs in their first season. Timpson started both Legion games in the postseason, helping the team defeat the Seattle Seawolves on the road to advance to the Championship Game where he scored a 3rd try of the season as the Legion fell to the utterly dominant Chicago Hounds.

Timpson finished his 2026 season in North America as a MLR runner-up, earning a pair of Team of the Week selections as well as All-MLR honours when he was named to the All-MLR Honourable Mention XV. He gained more ground than any other forward in MLR last season and beat more defenders than any other player in the League, dispatching 62 of them on 516m gained (20 more defenders beaten than the next highest player) while still averaging over 11 tackles per game for a total of 125 on the season, also in the Top 10 league wide. Timpson is no stranger to the English 2nd tier, having played with Cambridge at the start of the 2025/26 season, but now returns for a full season with Ampthill. Congratulations, Ed!

Timpson wasn’t the only move to England announced over the last few weeks. On 5th August, the Bristol Bears announced that New England Free Jacks scrum-half Oscar Lennon was returning to the club for the 2026/27 PREM Rugby season. The US-eligible Welshman first joined Bristol in 2022, and has since split his time between the Bears and Hartpury in the Championship (England’s 2nd tier) as well as playing 3 seasons with the Free Jacks in New England between 2024-2026.

A 2x MLR Champion, Lennon earned 32 appearances with the Free Jacks across 3 seasons, including a high of 17 in 2025. Heading into 2026 his career high in starts was 5 but he doubled that this year, starting all 10 games for New England. He scored a career high 5 tries in those 10 games, 2nd only to Sione Tupou in terms of tries scored for the Free Jacks, and recorded over 50 tackles and 200m+ gained in possession. These numbers are remarkably similar to his totals from 2025, but achieve in 7 fewer games played. In total, Lennon scored 8 tries and 58pts across his 32 games with New England, starting 19 times and helping them to two Shields in 2024 & 2025. He started the 2024 MLR Championship game, and came off the bench in the 2025 Championship.

Lennon has earned 15 appearances for the Bears to date as well as almost 30 with Hartpury. His seemingly permanent move back to Ashton Gate rules him out for the vast majority of the 2027 MLR season, but the wording of the Free Jacks’ press release seems to suggest that he won’t be returning for a 4th season in New England next year. Very best of luck with the Bears, Oscar!

On August 3rd, a couple of days before Bristol’s announcement, Hong Kong based club Kowloon RFC announced that 2025 MLR Draftee Charlie Walsh was joining the club for the 2026/27 HKRFU Premiership season. The son of two Americans, Walsh is a Hongkonger born and raised in Clearwater Bay where he began playing rugby at the age of 8. He went to high school in New Zealand and developed in the Waikato system, playing with their U18 side before heading to the US for college, enrolling at UC – Berkeley.

Charlie Walsh played rugby with the Golden Bears throughout his time in California between 2020-2025, Captaining the side to a D1A title in his final year, their first D1A National XV title since 2011. He declared for the 2025 MLR Draft following his graduation and was selected in the 2nd round, 11th overall by the Seattle Seawolves and was included on the full Seawolves MLR roster when it was released in early March 2026. Walsh earned his MLR debut that season, appearing as a reserve in 5 of Seattle’s regular season games to help the team finish the season in 2nd with a 6-4 record, before being named in the replacements for their Semifinal clash with the California Legion, although he was ultimately not used in that defeat.

As mentioned already, Walsh is a born and raised Hongkonger. The Hong Kong national team have already expressed interest in the 24yo prop in the run up to their Rugby World Cup debut in 2027, so it’s likely that Walsh is returning home with his eyes on representing Hong Kong on the biggest stage. Very best of luck, Charlie!

Hounds Heading to Hamilton

On 21st July, Waikato announced their squad for the 2026 NPC season. Included in this squad were a few names familiar to MLR fans, such as 2x Shield winning New England Free Jacks Captain Mitch Jacobson or Utah Warriors playmaker D’Angelo Leuila, but no players from the 2026 season. Or so we thought. A few weeks later on 4th August 2026, the Chicago Hounds announced a high-performance partnership with the Hamilton-based NPC team, ‘with the intent to share resources, intellectual property, and give players development opportunities’.

As a part of this partnership three homegrown players from the Shield winning 2026 Chicago Hounds squad are heading to New Zealand to spend 3 months training with the NPC side: Koby Baker, Jackson Zabierek, and Jake Kinneeveauk. A native of North Carolina, prop Koby Baker is the only one of these three that wasn’t selected in the MLR Draft. Picking up rugby in high school, he went to Cardiff Met University in Wales before heading to Australia, then back to the USA to join the American Raptors for the 2024 Super Rugby Americas season. Following the SRA campaign Baker joined the Seattle Seawolves for the latter half of that year’s MLR season where he earned 5 appearances off the bench including all 3 playoff games that Seattle played as they fell to the New England Free Jacks in the 2024 Championship Game. Following the 2024 MLR season Baker headed to Chicago to play with the Hounds Academy side in the fall, and has stayed with Chicago ever since. He earned a pair of appearances during the 2025 MLR season before an impressive fall campaign earned him a full MLR contract for 2026 where he earned a career high 6 appearances as the Hounds dominated the regular season.

Both Kinneeveauk and Zabierek are 2nd Round MLR Draftees. Californian hooker Zabierek was selected 18th overall out of the University of Santa Cruz by the Seattle Seawolves in 2023, and played alongside Koby Baker during the 2024 season, earning 1 start in 6 games. Similar to Baker, he then headed to Chicago and has played with the Hounds for the last two seasons, scoring 2 tries in as many starts and earning a further 22 MLR appearances for the Hounds. Alaskan back row Jake Kinneeveauk was selected a year after Zabierek, 22nd overall out of the University of Utah. He earned his MLR debut as a reserve which was his only MLR action during the 2025 season, but had a breakout year in 2026. Named as the 2026 Chicago Hounds Breakthrough Player of the Year, Kinneeveauk scored 3 tries in 9 games last season, starting 4 times including both of the Hounds’ playoff games, with one of his tries coming against Old Glory DC in the Semifinal.

All three Hounds ended the MLR season as newly crowned Champions and now have an amazing opportunity to continue to develop with Waikato for the 2026 NPC Season. It will be interesting to see both how these three young American players do in New Zealand, as well as how the Chicago Hounds’ new partnership with Waikato develops. Could we see some Waikato players heading to the Windy City for 2027?

Wrapping Up

After two quiet weeks following New Zealand’s final National Provincial Championship sides announcing their squads, the first week of August saw a spike in player movement from Major League Rugby, with two Brits heading back across the pond, a Hongkonger heading home with Rugby World Cup aspirations, and the Chicago Hounds’ new High Performance Partnership sees a trio of homegrown champions head to New Zealand!

Even though August gives MLR fans plenty to talk about with the Collegiate Draft scheduled for the end of the month, it’s the quietest part of the year in terms of player movement. As a result, these articles will be somewhat irregular for a while until the volume picks up. The last Player Movement article covered a fortnight, this edition covers three weeks, and it’s likely that we won’t see any moves into MLR until after the draft. Regardless, NARDB will try and keep fans up to date on all Player Movement when as and when signings are announced. Player-by-player posts can be found on our socials.

Thank you very much for giving this article a read and if you enjoyed it, please share it around so that other fans can stay informed of all the player movement around MLR so far! If there are any moves that were missed, please let us know by tagging us on social media or sending them our way directly. James and NARDB can be found on social media here:  @MLRStats on Instagram, JamDelay & @NARugbyDB on Twitter/X, and @JamDelay & @NARDB on Bluesky! Alternatively, you can reach out to NARDB via the ‘Contact’ tab on this site.

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Midweek Milestones: Standout Stats from the 2026 MLR Playoffs!

James Deeley

The 2026 Major League Rugby season was always going to be a sprint rather than a marathon and after months of waiting for kickoff, we find ourselves at the end of the season in the blink of an eye. Despite contracting to just 6 teams, the 2026 Campaign proved thoroughly entertaining with a competitive regular season and a pair of entertaining semifinals (albeit for very different reasons), culminating in a massive rugby party for the Championship Game in Chicago.

After a week off, welcome back to the final Midweek Milestones article of the 2026 season! This series dives into all the standout stats, player, and team milestones from the latest MLR games, so that ‘statsheads’ like myself don’t miss a thing. Although this series has been weekly for most of the season, rather than having a separate article for the Semifinals and Championship, this article will cover the entire playoffs as a whole. With an emphasis on ‘postseason’ stats, this article will likely end up longer than normal anyway given the sheer number of records that seemed to have been broken! Breaking with tradition slightly, this article will be split into the Semifinals, and the Final. Let’s start with the Semis!

The Semifinals

Appearance Achievements

The 2026 Semifinals saw a pair of players reach a half-century of appearances in major League Rugby, one in each match-up! Starting chronologically as the Semifinals kicked off with the Seattle Seawolves hosting the California Legion at the formidable Starfire Stadium in Tukwila. The Legion’s starting hooker, capped USA Eagle and 2019 World Rugby Men’s Player of the Year Nominee Joe Taufete’e is playing in his 5th MLR season for his 5th different team, finally reaching his half-century of appearances in the competition!

Born in American Samoa, ‘Big Joe’ earned his test debut for the USA Eagles against South Africa at the 2015 Rugby World Cup in England, earning his test debut on the sport’s biggest stage before ever playing a professional game. This changed in early 2016 when he joined the San Diego Breakers in the short lived PRO Rugby competition. Following it’s only season of play, Taufete’e returned across the pond to join the Worcester Warriors in the English Premiership, playing there from 2016-2020. It was while playing for Worcester that Taufete’e became the first (and to date, only) player from a ‘tier 2’ nation to be nominated for World Rugby Men’s Player of the Year. Following his time with the Warriors, and a stint in France with Lyon, Taufete’e returned to California to join the LA Giltinis for the 2022 season. To date, Taufete’e has scored 23 tries in 37 games for the USA, with the most recent coming in July 2022.

Although he played a cup of coffee with the Leicester Tigers during the 2022/23 Premiership season, Taufete’e has played in every season of MLR since 2022, representing the LA Giltinis (2022), Houston SaberCats (2023), Seattle Seawolves (2024), NOLA Gold (2025), and now the California Legion, where he now reached 50 appearances, starting 35 times. He’s appeared in all 11 games for the Legion so far this season, starting 7 times and scoring 3 tries to take his career total to 19, including a high of 8 in 14 games for the Seawolves in 2024. Congratulations, Joe!

The day after Taufete’e earned his 50th MLR appearance, another front rower earned his 50th MLR appearance in the other Semifinal between the Chicago Hounds and Old Glory DC. Brazilian prop/hooker Wilton Rebolo came off the bench in the Hounds’ demolition of DC to earn his half-century of appearances, starting 13 of his now 51 games in MLR, 4 of which came for the Hounds in 2026.

The São Jose dos Campos native is a Brazilian veteran, having earned his test debut for the national team back in 2015 (the same time as Taufete’e was earning his debut with the USA, coincidentally). He signed with the Austin Gilgronis ahead of the 2020 season but a knee injury in the pre-season meant that he played no part that year, which only lasted 5 rounds before it was cancelled due to COVID-19. He returned to MLR in 2021, this time as a member of the Rugby New York Ironworkers. Rebolo, the first Brazilian to play in MLR, represented New York for 2 seasons, starting 7 of his 27 games and scoring 2 tries. He earned 5 starts in 15 games (both still his career highs) in 2022 to help the Ironworkers to lift the Shield that season, ending the campaign as an MLR Champion before heading to Australia where he had earned a contract with the Western Force, becoming the first Brazilian to play in Super Rugby.

Rebolo returned to MLR in 2024, joining the Australian-heavy Rugby FC LA after they relocated from Atlanta. He earned 2 starts in 7 games for RFCLA during their debut season, before joining the Houston SaberCats the following year, where he scored his 3rd career MLR try and earned 10 appearances to help the ‘Cats advance to the 2025 Championship Game where they fell to the New England Free Jacks. Following the surprise withdrawal of the SaberCats from MLR following the 2025 season, Rebolo joined the Chicago Hounds, where he earned 4 starts in 7 appearances as a part of their undefeated campaign, and made it to his 3rd final to claim his 2nd Shield. Congratulations, Wilton!

Matthews passes 5k!

Lost among the disappointment of the Seattle Seawolves’ elimination from the 2026 season following their loss to the California Legion was a remarkable achievement by one of their main metre eaters this year. Although they fell to the Legion, the Seattle Seawolves recorded over 500m gained, with 142 of those gained by one man alone, Duncan Matthews.

This is the highest metres gained total of the entire 2026 Postseason, and pushes him over 800m gained on the season, averaging 80.6m in each of his 10 appearances this year and finishing as the Round Leader for metres gained no fewer than three times in 2026. What’s unbelievable about Matthews, is that this average is actually down on his career average, which sits at 87.9m gained per game across his 57 game career with the Seawolves so far. The more mathematically inclined readers made have already put together that this means that in the Semifinal match, Duncan Matthews’ career metres gained total passed 5,000m!

Matthews is just the 7th player in MLR history to have passed the 5km gained mark, and his average is far higher than any of the 6 players above him which includes the likes of MLR legends Mikey Te’o, Billy Meakes, and Paula Balekana! Matthews’ 806m gained in 2026 is the most of any player this season, and over 100m higher than Brock Webster in 2nd with 667m gained for the Chicago Hounds. He recorded 28 defenders beaten and scored 3 tries to take his career total to 20, knocking on the door of MLR’s Top 20 try scorers. Congratulations, Duncan!

Semifinal Scoring Stats

The first of the two 2026 MLR Semifinals was defined by a kicking duel between Seawolves fly-half Davy Coetzer, and his California Legion counterpart Coby Miln. Both had been dynamite from the tee all year, with Miln entering the postseason as MLR’s top scorer, and Coetzer not far behind. It was a back and forth opening 40 minutes and at the break, the score was even at 16-16 with only 1 try scored. 22 of the 32pts in the first half were scored by either Coetzer or Miln, with both players flawless from the tee and equal on 11pts each.

As the second half progressed, Coetzer and Miln remained neck and neck, and even as the Legion began to pull away on the scoreboard, these two stayed neck and neck. It wasn’t until Coetzer missed a 70th minute conversion, and Miln slotted a penalty 4 minutes later, that there was daylight between the two. The two playmakers had combined for 42pts and gone 16/17 from the tee, with Davy Coetzer scoring 19pts to Coby Miln’s 23. The New Zealander went 9/9 from the tee, equalling a record for most successful place kicks by a player in a single MLR game, set by Toronto Arrows legend Sam Malcolm back in 2019 and equalled by AJ Alatimu in 2022, although neither Malcolm (9/10) nor Alatimu (9/12) went 100%! Unsurprisingly, Miln’s 23pts is a new Legion single game record, passing his own previous record of 18pts. It’s also a new MLR record for the most points scored by a player in a MLR playoff game, surpassing the 21pts scored by Alatimu for the Seawolves against the (San Diego) Legion back in 2022! Congratulations, Coby!

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Prior to the 2026 postseason, the highest scoring playoff game in MLR history was a 73pt Western Conference Final match back in 2022, where the Seattle Seawolves defeated the Houston SaberCats 27-46. 4 years later, the Seattle Seawolves were involved once again as that record was broken. Despite playing in front of a home crowd at Starfire Stadium, their fortress where they had won 21 of their last 24 games heading into the postseason (including against the California Legion just the week before…), the Seawolves came out on the wrong side of this one. They fell 34-43 to a clinical Legion side, with both sides combining for 77pts, the highest scoring playoff game in MLR history! While the previous record had stood for years, this one wouldn’t stand for long at all, though.

Less that 24 hours later the Chicago Hounds hosted Old Glory DC in the second Semifinal of 2026 and as mentioned above, it was a demolition. The Hounds put up a huge 59pts against the Flags who probably gave them the toughest time during the regular season, and the final scoreline of 59-22 only looks somewhat reasonable due to two late scores from DC. The combined score of 81pts surpasses the 77pts of the previous semifinal and sets a new record for the highest scoring playoff game. How long will this one last?

The Hounds have now scored 61pts, 59pts twice, and 57pts during the 2026 season. The 59pts scored against DC is the highest points ever scored by a team in a MLR Playoff game, surpassing the previous record of 46pts scored by the Seattle Seawolves back in 2022, when they defeated the Houston SaberCats 27-46 in the Western Conference Final. The 37pt winning margin also sets a new record for the largest margin of victory in a MLR playoff game, replacing another Seawolves record of 24pts when they defeated the San Diego Legion 43-19 in the 2022 Western Eliminator. This 24pts was tied by the Chicago Hounds themselves when they defeated the NOLA Gold 21-45 in the 2024 Eastern Conference Semifinals. For the cherry on top of their huge victory over perennial playoff contenders Old Glory DC, the Hounds’ 8 tries in this game took them over 250 tries scored in Major League Rugby! Chicago moved up to 254 tries scored after the Semifinal, with Peyton Wall’s 33rd minute score marking the 250th try in franchise history.

The Final

Champagne Sundays

It is a safe bet that the weather for the 2026 Major League Rugby Championship game in Chicago was the worst of any final in league history, with torrential rain cancelling other events across the city. It didn’t dampen the spirits of the 4,400+ fans that turned up to SeatGeek Stadium to watch the hometown Chicago Hounds take on the California Legion for what would’ve been the first Shield for either side. If you are reading this article, you likely already know the result. The Chicago Hounds capped off a perfect season with the perfect ending, defeating the Legion 35-17 to record the first undefeated season in MLR history, going 12-0 through the regular season and playoffs. The nearest any other MLR team has come to a perfect season was the 2023 San Diego Legion team that went 16-2, but one of those losses came in the Final where they fell to the New England Free Jacks, also in Chicago but with far better weather!

The 2026 Chicago Hounds will go down in MLR legend as the first perfect season and the most dominant side in league history. It’s hard to make the case against them being the best side the league has ever seen, they don’t seem to have an obvious weakness, they can play all kinds of different styles, and their depth is incredible. Yes the 2026 campaign was only a maximum of 12 games, down from the 18 or 19 games required to make the final in previous seasons, but you can only play what’s in front of you, and boy did the Hounds do that. They recorded over 550pts and 81 tries scored in just 12 games, scoring at least 4 tries in every single match, regular season or playoff. For context, their 461pts scores in the 10-game 2026 regular season is higher than last year’s champions, the New England Free Jacks, scored across the sixteen game regular season last year!

In a year of high scoring postseason games, the 2026 Championship was no different. Yes, at a combined 52pts it was far lower than the 77pts and 81pts of the Semifinals, but this is the highest scoring Final in Major League Rugby history, surpassing the previous record of 50pts on the final kick of the game from Chris Hilsenbeck. This previous record was set just last year when the New England Free Jacks defeated the Houston SaberCats 28-22 in Rhode Island to claim their 3rd Shield in a row.

Finals Scoring

As mentioned, it was Chris Hilsenbeck’s penalty in the final minute of the game that cemented the 2026 Final as the highest scoring Championship game in league history, but that was only one of his six successful kicks from the tee throughout the game. Capped by the USA USA Eagle went 6/7 in miserable conditions, notching 3 penalties and 3 conversions for 15pts in total to tie the record for the most points ever scored by a single player in a Championship game, set by Jayson Potroz for the Free Jacks in 2024. These 15pts pushed him over 100pts on the season this year, moving into MLR’s Top 20 Points scorers with 224pts scored across his MLR career including 52pts in the playoffs, the highest among active players and 4th all-time. Congratulations, Chris!

Hilsenbeck’s 15pts made a large chunk of the Chicago Hounds’ 35pts on the night. As with many things the Hounds have done this season, this is also a record. It’s the most points ever scored by a team in the Championship game, just overtaking the LA Giltinis in their 31-17 victory over Rugby ATL in 2021 and marks the 3rd time that a side has scored over 30pts in the Final along with the Rugby New York Ironworkers, who defeated the Seattle Seawolves 30-15 back in 2022.

On the subject of scoring, now that the season is complete we know the identity of the top scorer from the 2026 season and it’s someone who has already been mentioned in this article for breaking records but isn’t a Chicago Hound! In his debut season in Major League Rugby, fly-half Coby Miln appeared in the maximum of 12 games to help the California Legion advance to the Championship game in their first season post-merger, scoring a huge 130pts in total to finish as MLR’s Top Scorer in a season where this author doubted if any player would even break 100! Finishing 26pts head of both Davy Coetzer & Chris Hilsenbeck (tied for 2nd with 104pts each) that included 35pts in the playoffs, Miln recorded a success rate of over 85% from the tee which is easily the highest among players that have finished the season as Top Scorer, and his 10.8pts per game is the highest by a top scorer since Jason Robertson’s 13.4ppg back in 2020, when the season was cancelled after 5 games! Congratulations, Coby!

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If scoring over 100pts in MLR’s 2026 ‘sprint season was a big ask, scoring 10+ tries looked almost impossible. However, just as there were 3 players to break a century in points scored, there were a pair of players to reach double-figures in tries scored and this time, they both represent the newly crowned Champs, and both dotted down in the Championship game! Finishing the season in 2nd place with a hugely impressive 10 tries scored in his 11 appearances is Canadian international Mason Flesch, who split his season between lock and back row across his 11 starts in 2026, and reached double figures with a somewhat trademark Flesch score in the Final. The former Toronto Arrow entered his 3rd season with the Hounds on 9 tries scored in his MLR career, and more than doubled that in a breakout campaign that saw him pick up 3 MLR First XV selections this season and put his name up as a Forward of the Year candidate!

In any other season, Flesch’s 10 tries in 11 games would be extraordinary. To achieve that and finish second in tries scored however, is almost unbelievable. But that is exactly what happened this season, with Mason Flesch sat behind Chicago Hounds hooker Theo Fourie who averaged a try a game in 2026, finishing with 11 tries scored in his 11 appearances (10 starts) en route to the Shield! The Super Rugby front row was brought in as a replacement for outgoing MLR legend (and all-time leading try scorer) Dylan Fawsitt, and it’s safe to say that he was up to the huge task of filling that gap in the Hounds pack. Fourie was at the centre of the fearsome Chicago set piece, and completed 79 tackles of his own while beating 13 defenders to earn a pair of MLR First XV selections. The 21 tries scored by Fourie and Flesch alone accounted for over a quarter (25.9%) of all Hounds tries this season, and isn’t far behind the New England Free Jacks’ team total of 29 tries scored in the entire 2026 season. Congratulations, Mason & Theo!

The ‘Curse of First’

Earlier in this article mentioned the 2021 season where the LA Giltinis lifted their first and only MLR Shield. For a long time, they were the first and only side in Major League Rugby to have topped the standings in the regular season, and went on to lift the Shield in the same season. The Seattle Seawolves, who have made it to 4 finals and lifted the Shield twice in the early years of the league, never finished as regular season leaders. None of the New England Free Jacks teams during their threepeat run did either. In fact, the only time the Free Jacks did finish as regular season leaders was in 2022, the season before their first Shield when they were knocked out by eventual Champions Rugby New York in the Eastern Conference Finals. This rather bizarre pattern has been dubbed ‘The Curse of First’, but even that couldn’t defeat the 2026 Chicago Hounds.

Completing the first undefeated season in MLR history, the Hounds overcome ‘The Curse of First’ and become the first team in 5 years (and just the 2nd team ever!) to finish the MLR regular season as league leaders and lift the Shield in the same season. It serves as further proof that absolutely nothing was going to stop the Chicago Hounds from claiming their first MLR Championship, but is the curse gone for good, or just for this year? League leaders are still 2-8 when it comes to lifting the Shield, but we’ll have to wait for 2027 to find out…

Wrapping Up

With the Shield having been awarded, the 2026 Major League Rugby ‘Sprint Season’ has come to an end. Although shorter than previous years and probably less far-reaching, it was no doubt entertaining and one of the more competitive seasons from week to week, if not from game to game. With the obvious exception, any team could beat any other team on any given week, and it took until the very last regular season game to decide the playoff match-ups. In the end, the best team (possibly ever) lifted the Shield, bringing the first MLR Championship to Chicago. Congratulations to the Chicago Hounds from the staff to the players to the fans, your deserving 2026 Major League Rugby Champions!

As the curtain has fallen on the 2026 campaign, so it does on these Midweek Milestones articles also. Whether you read one paragraph 6 weeks ago, only read this article, or came back every single week, thank you. Please let us know if you enjoyed these articles, what you liked about them or what we could improve, or if anything was missed throughout the postseason. Who knows what the long dark off-season may bring, but there are USA & Canada international matches to look forward to soon, followed by the 2026 MLR Draft likely some time in August, and there’s bound to be all sorts of other news sprinkled in over the next weeks and months. Thanks again for reading Midweek Milestones, and welcome to the off-season!

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.

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MLR Player Movement: 2026 Season End – July 5th, 2026

James Deeley

It’s been a couple of weeks since the Chicago Hounds lifted the Shield on a soaking wet Sunday evening at SeatGeek Stadium, and the lack of Major League Rugby is starting to set it. However, just because there are no more matches doesn’t mean there isn’t anything to talk about. The Nations Championship and Nations Cup competitions have kicked off and will provide a month of top quality test matches every weekend, the 2026 MLR Collegiate Draft will be held in roughly 6 weeks time, and between then and now, there will be all sorts of tidbits involving players, teams, and MLR itself!

While Midweek Milestones tends to be NARDB’s go-to articles while matches are being played, during the off-season the news shifts to player signings and as the purpose of this site is to keep fans as imformed as possible, it would be remiss of us to go without summarising all the player movement to, from, and within Major League Rugby. These summaries will be a constant throughout the MLR offseason, and will be weekly at most depending on the volume of player moves each week. Welcome to the first Player Movement summary of the 2026/27 off-season, covering the end of the 2026 season to July 5th, 2026!

Below is a summary graphic of all the moves this offseason so far:

Retirements

At the end of any professional sports season there will be a number of players who decide to call time on their career and hang up their boots. 2026 is no different, and there have already been three retirement announcements including a pair of MLR veterans, and it important that fans get the opportunity to recognise their outstanding careers, and say thank you.

The first player to announce his retirement after the 2026 MLR season actually announced it before his final game. On 17th June, a few days before the Championship game, English centre Ollie Devoto announced that he would be hanging up his boots at the conclusion of the 2026 MLR season. Devoto already had an impressive career before entering MLR for the 2025 season, having developed through the Bath system in England, he earned his Premiership debut in 2012 at the age of 18, and represented the club for 4 years, also representing the England U20 side before earning his test debut with England in the 2016 Summer Internationals. When the 2016/17 Premiership season started Devoto was still playing, but now representing the Exeter Chiefs. He played with the Chiefs from 2016-2024, earning over 100 appearances for the club and winning almost everything there was to win at club level including the Premiership Cup twice (2017/18, 2022/23), the Premiership itself twice (2016/17, 2019/20) while finishing as runners-up three times (2017/18, 2018/19, 2020/21), and even the European Champions Cup in 2019/20!

Ollie Devoto’s Exeter Chiefs resume alone would make for an outstanding pro career, but when his time with the club came to an end he headed across the pond to play in MLR, and represented the Chicago Hounds for 2 years. In his debut season with Chicago, Devoto averaged almost 10 tackles per game for 152 in his 16 appearances, starting all 16 and contributing an assist and 3 tries on over 450m gained to earn an All-MLR 2nd XV Selection. Returning for a second year with the Hounds after a heartbreaking defeat to the New England Free Jacks in the Eastern Conference Final, Devoto improved his production in half as many games on a dominant Hounds team, scoring another 3 tries and assisting a further 2 scores in 8 games (all starts) and making 16 tackles with 45m gained in the Championship Game as the Hounds claimed their first MLR Shield. Capping off his pro career with another Championship, Ollie Devoto can now add ‘MLR Champion’ to his already impressive resume. All the best in your retirement, Ollie!

The first retirement of the offseason proper was on the West Coast over in California. On June 27th, Fijian born loose forward Keni Nasoqeqe announced the end of his professional career after 8 seasons playing in MLR. Nasoqeqe began playing rugby at Lelean Memorial School in Fiji before moving to California in 2015 where he joined Belmont Shore RFC. It would be a few more years before he turned pro, joining the San Diego Legion ahead of their 2019 campaign. In his debut MLR season, Nasoqeqe started 12 of his 13 appearances for the Legion, gaining over 300m in possession while completing 138 tackles on defence to help the Legion advance to the Championship game (not for the last time in his MLR career), where they fell to the Seattle Seawolves in the dying seconds.

Nasoqeqe played with the San Diego Legion for 3 seasons between 2019-2021, earning 28 appearances (22 starts) and scoring 5 tries before swapping the beaches of California for Space City, joining the Houston SaberCats. He would spend the next 4 seasons in Black & Yellow, earning 17 appearances in 3 of his 4 seasons there for 63 appearances in total and starting 32 times including a career high of 14 in 2022. It was with the SaberCats that Nasoqeqe made it to his 2nd Championship game in 2025, coming off the bench as they fell to the New England Free Jacks. Following the unexpected withdrawal of the SaberCats from MLR, Nasoqeqe headed back to California to finish his career with the new look California Legion for the 2026 season. He appeared in every single Legion game during the season, starting 7 times and became a MLR Centurion after earning his 100th appearance to help them advance to their first, and his 3rd MLR Championship, falling to the Chicago Hounds. In total, 3x MLR Runner-Up Keni Nasoqeqe started 61 of his 103 appearances across 8 seasons, scoring 10 tries on over 1,800m gained in possession, and completing over 700 tackles on defence. Congratulations on a great career, Keni!

A few days after Keni Nasoqeqe announced his retirement, another MLR veteran did the same. On 3rd July, USA Eagle #525 Paul Mullen called time on his professional career following his ninth season in the competition in 2026. Born and raised in Ireland, Mullen played age-grade rugby for Munster under-18s, 19s, and 20s, as well as for Ireland under-19s before moving to Texas in 2011. When professional rugby came to Texas, the Houston SaberCats signed Mullen ahead of the inaugural season of Major League Rugby in 2018 and he would play with the ‘Cats for two seasons from 2018-2019, starting 7 of his 10 games with the team. While with the SaberCats, he was called up to the USA national team and earned his test debut in a 62-13 victory over Russia in June 2018, before heading to the UK where he played with the Newcastle Falcons in the Premiership and Doncaster Knights in the Championship during the MLR off-season before returning stateside.

For 2020, Paul Mullen moved from Texas to California and joined the San Diego Legion where he started all 5 games as the team went 5-0 before the season was cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic. When professional rugby returned to North America in 2021, Mullen had signed with the Utah Warriors where he would spend 4 seasons and is arguably the team he is most well known for playing with. Between 2021-2024, Mullen would start 37 of his 57 games for the Warriors, gaining over 120m in each season for over 600m gained for Utah in total including a career high of 193m in 2022. He also recorded his first 100+ tackle season, completing 112 tackles in 14 games in 2023. Following the 2024 campaign, the Utah Warriors cleaned house and bid farewell to over a dozen players from their squad, including Paul Mullen who headed from Utah to New Orleans to join the NOLA Gold where he had another productive year. For the Gold, he completed a career high 115 tackles and appeared in all 16 games (11 starts) that NOLA played that year, passing 500 tackles made in his MLR career as a prop.

With the NOLA Gold withdrawing from the competition after the 2025 season Paul Mullen moved to his fifth different MLR franchise when he joined Old Glory DC in the nation’s capital. He started all 11 games for the Flags in the shortened 2026 campaign, completing 74 tackles to help the team squeeze into the postseason when they unfortunately ran into the juggernaught Chicago Hounds in the semifinals. Along with representing his adopted country, Paul Mullen has started 71 of his 99 appearances (yes, 99!) throughout his 9 seasons in Major League Rugby across 5 different franchises, gaining over 800m in possession and completing over 600 tackles. Congratulations on a fantastic career, Paul!

Heading Across the Pond

Along with the trio of retiring legends, five players from the 2026 season have picked up contracts across the pond for the upcoming 2026/27 seasons in european competitions. This is not uncommon and shows the talent on display in Major League Rugby this year. Of these 5 Europe-bound players, 3 of them are headed to the UK so let’s kick it off there.

Starting in New England, where the Free Jacks never quite got it together for the 2026 season, and missed out on the postseason despite showing glimpses of the x3 Champions that we are used to seeing. One of their (many) new signings for 2026, Kienan Higgins, took a detour on the way to Boston to join Edinburgh Rugby in the URC on a short term deal before linking up with the Free Jacks prior to the start of the season. Clearly Higgins impressed in the Scottish capital, as on 27th May (yes, long before the MLR season was over) the club announced that they had signed Higgins to a full one-year contract for the 2026/27 URC season, linking up with his younger brother Riley. Higgins started all 9 of his games for the Free Jacks in 2026, contributing 2 tries and an assist on over 325m gained with ball in hand and averaged 13.4 tackles per game for a total of 121 on the season. Best of luck, Kienan!

Staying in the UK but moving from Scotland and the URC down to England and CHAMP Rugby, the fully professional 2nd tier of English Rugby. On 19th June 2026, the Doncaster Knights announced the signing of English hooker Ben Sugars from the California Legion for their 2026/27 Campaign. The Super Rugby capped Ben Sugars spent two season in MLR playing with Rugby FC LA (2025) and the California Legion (2026), starting 14 of his 22 games and scoring 6 tries in total, 4 of which came in 2026 to help the Legion end the season as Runners-Up. Sugars completed just under 200 tackles (198) and gained well over 350m in his MLR career and now returns home after a few years in Australia and the USA. Congratulations, Ben!

Sugars isn’t the only MLR player heading to England after the 2026 season, however. On 1st July, London Scottish announced that they had signed Patrick Beattie for their upcoming campaign. Scottish, who had played in CHAMP rugby in 2025/26, finished 13th and lost their relegation playoff to Blackheath, so will be playing their 2026/27 season in the semi-professional National League 1, but this is still a high standard of rugby. What is interesting is that Patrick Beattie is a MLR draftee, having been selected 26th overall by RFCLA out of Long Beach State University in 2024. The California native spent the 2025 season with RFCLA where he was teammates with Ben Sugars, before signing with Old Glory DC for the 2026 season. Beattie is yet to make his MLR debut, but now heads overseas for the chance of more gametime. Congratulations, Patrick!

Moving now away from the UK to the south, but not too far south. A pair of MLR names will be headed to France to compete in the French 2nd tier in 2026/27, the Pro D2. On June 25th, Stade Montois in the south of France announced the addition of Australian back row Baden Godfrey who joins after playing his debut season in MLR with Anthem RC in 2026. The 23yo Godfrey appeared in all 10 games for the Rising Stars is 2026, starting half of them and scoring 3 tries on 290m in possession beating an impressive 23 defenders. Despite not starting half of Anthem’s games this season, Godfrey averaged over 11 tackles per game and finished as their 2nd highest tackler with 112, just behind captain Johan Momsen on 119. Best of luck in France, Baden!

Godfrey will be joined in France by California Legion standout and fellow Australian Ben Houston, though not on the same side. On 1st July, Aurillac in central France announced the addition of 27yo Randwick back row after two years in MLR with RFCLA (2025) and the Legion (2026). He started all 22 of his appearances in MLR, scoring 14 tries in total including 6 in 8 games for the Legion this year in addition to a pair of assists and 13 defenders beaten en route to the 2026 Championship, which he started. Houston has averaged just under 11 tackles per game for 241 in total, gained over 900m in possessionand heads over to France as an MLR runner-up. Very best of luck in France, Ben!

Wrapping Up

A trio of retirements and five named headed to ply their trade in Europe in the Autumn just about does it for a relatively busy first few weeks of the offseason! As mentioned in the intro, these articles will come out most weeks depending on the volume of player movement to, from, and around MLR as we head deeper into the offseason. To reassure fans who may have noticed that all 8 of these moves are from MLR (retirements included), but this is typical for the early off-season as teams elsewhere in the world are busy recruiting for their upcoming seasons, but here in North America we have a long time to wait until the hype starts to build for the 2027 season.

Thank you very much for giving this article a read and if you enjoyed it, please share it around so that other fans can stay informed of all the player movement around MLR so far! If there are any moves that were missed, please let us know by tagging us on social media or sending them our way directly. James and NARDB can be found on social media here:  @MLRStats on Instagram, 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 rugby gear be sure to visit rugbynow.com and use code ‘MLRSTATS’ at checkout for 15% off of your order!

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

James Deeley

The 2026 Major League Rugby ‘Sprint Season’ is complete! After 10 rounds, 4 of the 6 teams in this year’s competition have earn their right to compete for the Shield in the postseason, and it went down to the wire! A thoroughly entertaining weekend of rugby saw the playoff possibilities change countless times as tries were scored and crowds roared. The regular season is now complete but before we turn our attention to the playoffs, lets dig into some of the numbers from the final round of regular season play.

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! As mentioned, round 11 saw the playoff picture solidified, but it came down to the wire after some close calls that could’ve meant huge upsets! 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

As always, Midweek Milestones kicks off with the appearance achievements section, recognising players that earned a milestone appearance in last week’s games, 50 games played, 100 games played, 50 games for their team, etc. This week however, is a little bit different. This week we recognise a 115th Major League Rugby appearance from a league veteran, Seattle Seawolves stalwart, and capped USA Eagle, JP Smith.

JP Smith’s 115th MLR appearance makes him the most capped player in league history, surpassing the 114 games played for another legend of this league, Dylan Fawsitt who recently ended his career on a high with a US Club Rugby Championship title with Old Blue. The Butcher represented 3 different team throughout his MLR career, but JP Smith has only ever represented one. He has earned all 115 appearances with the Seattle Seawolves since entering the league back in 2019, helping them to their 2nd straight shield in his debut season that year.

A regular in the Seawolves 9 jersey since his debut season, JP Smith has played the maximum number of possible games in a MLR season 3 times, earning 18 appearances (16 regular season + 2 playoff) in their Shield-winning 2019 season, and 19 appearances (16 regular season + 3 playoff) in 2022 (when he started all 19) and in 2024. Other than the inaugural MLR season in 2018 before Smith joined the franchise, in every season that he played the maximum number of games, the Seattle Seawolves made it to the Championship Game. Spending much of this season on the wing, Smith has played in 9 of a possible 10 games however, so Seawolves fans may not want to read too much into that!

Smith, who earned his test debut for the USA as Eagle #572 against Romania in July 2024, has scored 23 tries in his MLR career so far and 133pts in total for the Seawolves, running up just shy of 2,000m gained in possession and completing close to 750 tackles in his career. Impressive for a player in typically lost-tackle positions like scrum-half or wing. Smith’s 115th appearance at the weekend was his 104th start, tied with fellow Seawolves stalwart Riekert Hattingh for the MLR lead, and one of only 3 players with over 100 starts in the competition with Dylan Fawsitt. Congratulations, JP!

Hounds complete Perfect (Regular) Season!

A significant portion of these Midweek Milestones article this season has been spent fawning over the Chicago Hounds who seemed to break a new record on a weekly basis, and not to rock the boat, this week is no different. They faced the New England Free Jacks at the weekend, who were playing for their season and just happened to be the team who dumped the Hounds out of the playoffs in the 2025 Eastern Conference Final. The 3x defending champs kept it close, and were even leading into the final 15 minutes, but with revenge and a 10-0 record on the line, as well as regular starters strategically coming off the bench, the Hounds were able to accelerate away from New England, ending their season with a 19-35 victory in from of their home fans. I have never heard ‘Fort Quincy’ so quiet, and it must’ve been music to the ears of the Chicago Hounds.

It’s quite poetic that the Hounds overcame the defending champions in their own back yard to secure the first undefeated regular season in Major League Rugby history. In fact, not only was in an undefeated season, but it was a perfect season. Chicago recorded a bonus point victory for 10 straight weeks for 50pts in the standings, the maximum available points and only allowing their opponents a single losing bonus point, claimed by Old Glory DC in their thriller last week.

Major League Rugby is no stranger to dominant seasons, but nothing quite like this. The first team that comes to mind for many fans will likely be the 2023 San Diego Legion, who recorded an extraordinary 15-1 regular season with 74 of a possible 80pts in the standings, 92.5% of the maximum possible points. Yes, this was a longer, 16 game season, but the Legion only averaged 4.8 tries per game (tpg) to the 2026 Hounds’ whopping 6.9. Nice. similarly, the Legion averaged 34.6 points per game (ppg) and an average winning margin of 17.9, both of which also fall short of the Hounds’ 46.1ppg and 20.9 average winning margin. The 14-2 Free Jacks of 2023 only close the gap slighty, with 5.0tpg, 34.7ppg, and an average winning margin of 20.2 with 68 of 80 possible points in the standings. Even the mighty 2021 LA Giltinis, who lifted the Shield in their first season and were arguably MLR’s first ‘juggernaut’, comes it at a seemingly mediocre 12-4 record, 4.9tpg, 34.1ppg, and average winning margin of 20 with 63/80 points.

The real magnitude of what the Chicago Hounds have achieved this season boils down to whether you view a 10 game season as drastically ‘easier’ than a 16 game season. The Hounds can only play what’s in front of them however and it’s not so much what they have achieved this season, but how they achieved it. Of course, it will all mean nothing if, like the 2023 San Diego Legion, they fall short of the Shield (also in Chicago, coincidentally). MLR’s ‘curse of first’ is a fascinating thing, with only 1 team in league history finishing as the top team in the regular season and lifting the Shield the same year, that being the 2021 LA Giltinis. The Hounds face Old Glory DC next weekend, who have given them the most trouble in both of their matchups this season, so only time will tell…

Scoring Stats

Last week, Midweek Milestones mentioned that USA Eagle Luke Carty had set a new single season points scoring record for Anthem RC, at 53pts in 2026. In the final game of the regular season for the Rising Stars, he tacked on another 6pts in a really close contest with Old Glory DC which they were leading at the 70 minute mark, but couldn’t hold out the Flags, who themselves were desperate for a playoff spot. Regardless, Carty finishes the 2026 season with 59pts for Anthem, all from the boot with a success rate of 75.68% (28/37). Not only does this set the new single season record in stone, but for the second week in a row Carty surpasses Cliven Loubser, this time passing his 57 career points for Anthem RC to become their all time top scorer!

With murmurs already starting in MLR circles about the future of Anthem RC given that their 3yr deal for World Rugby funding has come to an end, I’m sure I’m not the only fan to hope that Luke Carty’s new records for the Rising Stars can be contested again in 2027.

Back to the playoff bound teams now, but still building on something that was covered in the previous Midweek Milestones article. Last week, Divan Rossouw picked up his 17th career MLR try which took his total for the Seattle Seawolves up to 102pts and becoming the 7th player to pass 100pts scored for the 2x Champs. This week, that club has grown to 8!

Only beaten to 100pts by Rossouw’s limited goal kicking earlier this season while Davy Coetzer was injured, South African standout Duncan Matthews dotted down for his 20th career try for the Seawolves in their home semifinal clinching victory over their west coast rivals, the California Legion. Matthews’ 20th try actually puts him slightly ahead of Rossouw with 104pts thanks to two automatic conversions (for newer MLR fans, in previous seasons if a try was scored directly under the posts, a full 7pts would be awarded and there would be no conversion. This was scrapped for 2026) to become the eighth player in team history to score 100pts for the team! For anyone wondering, Davy Coetzer is the next closest Seawolf to 100, currently sat on 85pts all scored this season.

Wrapping up the scoring stats with the 3rd hat trick of 2026, and the second for the Chicago Hounds! It seem like no matter who the Hounds name in their starting XV or even their matchday 23, they perform. In fact, in weeks that they field a ‘rotated’ roster, there seems to be a pattern of one depth player really stepping up. The likes of Canadian international Matt Oworu in Round 5, Jake Kinneeveauk in Round 8, and now Tiaan Loots in Round 11!

The MLR veteran and long time San Diego Legion player is actually enjoying his seventh season in the competition, after playing with the Houston SaberCats in his debut year (2020), before joining the Legion for 2021-2025. He’s earned over 50 appearances in MLR, made just shy of 3,500m in possession (including a high of 988m in 2022!) and scored 17 tries, but these tries have come in batches. Twice, Loots has recorded 0 tries in a season (2022, 2025), but he’s also scored 4 in 2023 and a high of 6 in 2024. He has served more of a depth role on the Hounds this season, and had 0 tries coming into their clash with the Free Jacks, but that all changed. He just had a knack for being in the right place at the right time this week, and recorded his first career MLR hat trick to help Chicago secure that perfect 10-0 record, and was named as MLR Player of the Week to top it off!

As mentioned, this is only the 3rd hat trick of the season which averages out to 1 every 10 games, yet it’s the second for the Hounds who are just catching lightning in a bottle this year, following Brock Webster in against the Seattle Seawolves in Round 5. It’s the 5th hat trick in Chicago Hounds history, and the 56th in MLR history. It’s highly likely that it’s the last hat trick of the 2026 season as well, unless the playoffs have some surprises in store!

The Newest Member of the 1000 Tackle Club!

Not forgetting the more granular milestones compared to wins or points, California Legion flanker Lance Williams completed a team high 15 tackles (tied with Cyrille Cama) ot take his career total over 1,000 tackles completed in MLR! Now on 1,004 tackles, the long time Utah Warrior is the 6th player in MLR history to pass 1,000 tackles completed, and has made 113 in 2026 where he’s started all 10 of California’s games so far. Williams has averaged just over 11 tackles per game across his 91 game (85 start) MLR career, including four seasons with over 170 tackles made. He’s come close to breaking his career high of 190 tackles for the Warriors in 2019, with two 173 tackle season in 2021 and 2022, and 181 tackles completed in 2023. Combining this with his just over 3,400m gained in possession and 21 career tries, and it’s easy to see why Stephen Hoiles likes him in the Legion starting XV. Congratulations, Lance!

Scorigami Check

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!

Old Glory DC 29 – 21 19 – 35 33 – 19
2nd Occurrence2nd Occurrence5th Occurrence
21 – 29
2024 – Rd 8		 35 – 19
2019 – Rd 14		 19 – 33
2026 – Rd 2
19 – 33
2025 – WCF
19 – 33
2025 – Rd 15
19 – 33 NOLA rugby
2025 – Rd 8
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 occurred before. For example, The Seattle Seawolves defeated the New England Free Jacks 21-29 as the away team, but in Rd 11 of 2026 Old Glory DC defeated Anthem RC as the home side, but these are still counted as the same score.

Wrapping Up

The most capped player in MLR history, the leagues first perfect season, and plenty more Midweek Milestones as the playoff picture is locked in. There was drama from the first kickoff of the 2026 regular season, to the final whistle of the final game. The whirlwind 10-game season and has provided us with heaps of standout stats to talk about in Midweek Milestones, but the business end of the campaign is here. It’s time for the playoffs!

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 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 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 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!