Tag: Rugby FC LA

Midweek Milestones: Standout Stats from Round 14 of MLR2025!

NARDatabase

James Deeley

The 2025 Major League Rugby regular season rumbles on and has definitely arrived at the business end of the 17-week season! With 1 team already eliminated from playoff contention and 1 team already clinching a playoff spot, every point in the standings is crucial as teams hunt for post-season spots and home field advantage.

Welcome back to Midweek Milestones, the weekly article that highlights and examines the standout stats from each round of MLR action! The purpose of these articles is to recognise achievements by players and/or teams that may have gone unnoticed or flown under the radar otherwise, providing fans with some extra insight and context every week! Although almost every game has playoff implications at this point of the season it was a quiet week for big stats, with one huge exception that you’ll see as you keep reading. As always, the now-regular Appearance Achievements section is up first!

Appearance Achievements

In what is very unusual for the Appearance Achievements section of NARDB’s Midweek Milestones articles, there is only the one MLR Appearance milestone to discuss this week! This week’s lone appearance milestone came in the latest chapter of MLR’s most storied rivalry, the Western Conference clash between the Seattle Seawolves and the San Diego Legion up at Starfire Stadium in Tukwila.

Although the Legion posted about Ryan James, Tomas Aoake, Hugh Roach, and Marcel Brache all reaching 50 MLR appearances, 3 of these are in fact late. Ryan James is on 51 appearances after the Legion’s nailbiting defeat to the Legion in Round 14, as are Marcel Brache and Hugh Roach. Tomas Aoake, however, did celebrate his 50th MLR appearance on Saturday! Of the four players mentioned, the New Zealander is the only one to have earned all of his first 50 MLR appearances with the San Diego Legion. Aoake is a rare case in that he has started every single one of his 50 appearances for the Legion, and has proved a deadly attacking threat since his debut in 2022. He has recorded 23 tries across 4 seasons to date, including a high of 11 in 2023 when he and the Legion finished as MLR Runners-up. Aoake is currently has 5 tries in 2025 already, putting him tied for 13th with the likes of Andrew Coe in LA and Ed Fidow for the Gold, and is just shy of 3,000m gained in his career. Congratulations, Tomas!

Source: @sdlegion via Instagram

Monday Night Madness!

In a Monday night thriller up at Seatgeek Stadium in Chicago, the Hounds couldn’t hold off Rugby FC LA who scored with the clock in the red to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat yet again. This is now the FIFTH game in a row where Rugby FC LA have scored in the 77th minute or later, a run that includes salvaging a draw against Seattle and now this victory over the Hounds, as well as two losing bonus points to help RFCLA’s push to secure their first post-season appearance.

For the Hounds, they will be bitterly disappointed to miss out on the opportunity to close the game to the Free Jacks for the top spot in the Eastern Conference. Chicago recorded 249 tackles in this game, the highest of any team in the 2025 MLR season so far and the 3rd highest tackle total in league history behind the Seattle Seawolves and Rugby ATL, who both recorded 280 tackles in 2018 & 2021 respectively. Unlike Seattle and Atlanta however, the Chicago Hounds did not emerge victorious. The Hounds’ 249 tackles is the new highest losing tackle total in MLR history and although it may indicate that possession was skewed in favour if RFCLA, it was. But only just. LA enjoyed 54 of the possession and were forced to make 202 tackles of their own, showing that the match was far from one-way traffic!

Source: @HoundsChicago via Twitter/X

Of the Chicago Hounds’ 249 tackles, 27 were completed by James Scott, setting a new franchise record and surpassing the previous record of 23 tackles set by Lucas Rumball back in Round 8 of this season. This takes Scott’s 2025 total to 152. This is just 1 tackle behind his career high of 153 set last season, in five fewer games. Congratulations, James!

Lucas Rumball: Tackle Machine!

Staying on the topic of tackling and as already mentioned above, the Chicago Hounds were forced to make an incredible amount of tackles in Round 14 and they almost came away with the victory, but not quite. However, the Hounds do get to celebrate an incredible achievement earned by their 2025 Captain, Lucas Rumball.

Rumball completed 15 tackles in Round 14, taking his season total to 129 (and counting) and becoming the first player in Major League Rugby history to pass ONE THOUSAND tackles completed in his career! Rumball now sits on 1,009 tackles, having recorded over 100 in each of his last five MLR seasons!

Lucas Rumball becomes the first player in MLR history to pass 1,000 tackles completed!

The Captain of the Canadian national team, Rumball represented the Toronto Arrows for 5 seasons from 2019 to their withdrawal in 2023, completing 770 tackles as an Arrow. He finished 2nd in MLR tackling in the shortened 2020 season with 73 in just 5 games, and finished as MLR’s top tackler the following year with a career high 228! A native of Scarborough, Ontario, Lucas Rumball has averaged 144 tackles per season and just over 13 tackles per game in his 77 game MLR career so far, and isn’t showing any signs of slowing down just yet. Congratulations, Lucas!

Wrapping Up

A short and sweet Midweek Milestones this week as the stats gods have their eyes fixed on the 2025 Playoff picture, with nearly every game having serious implications for multiple teams. Despite this, there was still a new member of the half-century club, a new season high for tackles made, and an extraordinary MLR first from one of Canada’s most well-known players!

Thank you for reading this edition of NARDB’s Midweek Milestones article! If you like this series, please get in touch on social media or share this article to help highlight these achievements! If there’s anything that has been missed that you feel is worth mentioning, you can reach out to NARDB via the ‘Contact’ tab on this site. Alternatively, you can reach out to NARDB or James on social media: @MLRStats on Instagram/Threads, @JamDelay & @NARugbyDB on Twitter/X, and @JamDelay & @NARDB on Bluesky! NARDB can also be found on YouTube, at NARStats!

Finally, If you’re looking to get your hands on some of the new Macron merch for 2025 or to add to your jersey collection, visit shopmlr.com to get your hands on all that new gear, and remember to use code ‘MLRSTATS’ at checkout for 15% off your order!

Midweek Milestones: Standout Stats from Round 13 of MLR2025!

NARDatabase

James Deeley

The business end of the 2025 Major League Rugby season is here, so much so that the first team has already been mathematically eliminated from playoff contention! Round 13 of the season is a strange one in that there was a game earlier this week on Monday night, but Round 14 started almost immediately after with a Tuesday night match up. It may have made more sense for the Tuesday night game to be included in Round 13 and Round 14 start on Friday, but there must have been a reason for it…

Welcome back to Midweek Milestones! The weekly article that explores and highlights all of the standout stats from the latest round of MLR action. This article will cover the entirety of Round 13, as well as the first game of Round 14. The purpose of this article series is to highlight some of the milestones or achievements from around the league that might not otherwise get the coverage or recognition they deserve. If you’re a fan of these articles, please go back and read the past editions (if you haven’t already!) and share them with your friends. As is tradition, first up are the appearance achievements!

Appearance Achievements

For the first time in a number of weeks, no players earned their Major League Rugby debuts during Round 13. This is likely because teams are getting the hang of their squad rotation as the midweek games continue to test the depth of every squad. The players earning debuts a few weeks ago are now entering their 2nd, 3rd, or 4th MLR game, giving them valuable exposure to top-level competition and letting coaches know what they’re capable of. However, just because there were no debutants this week doesn’t mean the Appearance Achievements section of Midweek Milestones is empty. Four players entered the half-century club in Round 13, all earning their 50th MLR appearances in the same game: the Western Conference clash between the San Diego Legion and Houston SaberCats.

Starting with the hosting San Diego Legion who had a pair of players celebrating their 50th MLR appearances, both of whom started their MLR careers in Austin with the Gilgronis. First up is Australian hooker Hugh Roach, who joined the AGs ahead of the 2021 MLR season. A former Australia U20 man, Roach started 19 of his 23 games with the Gilgronis from 2021 until their disqualification at the end of the 2022 regular season. He scored 14 tries in black & orange before moving to the Chicago Hounds following the 2022 dispersal draft. Roach scored another 3 tries in 6 games (5 starts) for the Hounds in their inaugural season, before heading to California and signing with the San Diego Legion for 2024. Since then, he’s scored 7 tries in 21 games (all starts) for the Legion, taking his MLR try total to 24. Hugh Roach has started 45 of his 50 MLR appearances since 2021, with just over 1,200m gained and 549 tackles completed including 4 seasons of 100+ tackles including 2025. Congratulations, Hugh!

Joining the 50-club alongside Hugh Roach is Eagle #503, Marcel Brache. Raised in South Africa, Brache represented the USA at the Rugby World Cup in Japan in 2019, before joining the Austin Gilgronis in 2022 from the Western Force. Brache recorded a career high 911m gained in his 13 games with the AGs in 2022, playing alongside Hugh Roach. He joined the San Diego Legion following the disqualification of the Gilgronis and has started 32 of his 37 games for the Legion in his 3 seasons there. Brache has started 44 of his 50 career MLR games, scoring 5 tries in total and running for 2,435m gained. Congratulations on your 50th MLR appearance, Marcel!

Moving over to the Legion’s opposition, the Houston SaberCats, who also celebrated a pair of 50th appearances! Starting in the front row with Pono Davis! The Hawaiian prop began his MLR career with the ‘Cats back in 2022, and has earned all 50 of his MLR appearances with Houston. A crossover athlete from the XFL, Davis played with the American Raptors before entering MLR and earned just the 1 start through his first 2 seasons and 23 games in MLR. Since then however, he has worked his way into the starting lineup more and more often, starting 4 of 17 games last year, and 9 of 10 in 2025 so far. To date, Pono Davis has started 14 of his 50 appearance for the SaberCats, completing 297 tackles but is yet to score a try. Perhaps 2025 is the year? Congratulations, Pono!

Source: @houstonsabercats via Instagram.

The final player joining the half-century club in Round 13, playing for the Houston SaberCats alongside Pono Davis for his entire MLR career to date is South African fly-half/fullback Davy Coetzer! Like Davis, Coetzer started his MLR career back in 2022, exploding onto the scene with 3 tries and 79pts scored in his debut season. Since then, Coetzer has scored another 15 tries to take his total to 18, along with an impressive 349pts scored in total for the SaberCats. Coetzer has started 49 of his 50 MLR appearances to date and is a 2-time All-MLR selection (2nd XV in 2023, Honourable Mention XV in 2024). He is currently MLR’s 8th highest scorer of all time, and the 4th highest among active players. Coetzer earns his 50th MLR appearance after missing a few weeks due to injury, but doesn’t look like he’s lost a step. Congratulations, Davy!

Joe Johnston: New England’s most Capped Player!

On Saturday Joe Johnston, the 2025 Captain of the New England Free Jacks, featured in his 59th match for the franchise, becoming the most capped player in team history! The New Zealand flanker has appeared in 67.82% of all Free Jacks MLR games ever played, starting 47 times and completing 733 tackles to date. Johnston scored his 10th try this weekend while donning New England’s 2025 City Edition jersey, celebrating the 400th birthday of the City of Quincy!

Joe Johnston becomes the most capped Free Jack!

What makes Joe Johnston’s achievement that much more impressive is that he wasn’t with the team for the 2024 season, instead completing his studies in his native New Zealand! Johnston overtook Free Jacks legend John Poland for sole possession of first place. Poland, who would be way out in front if not for injury, is now level with Club Captain Josh Larsen who earned his 58th Free Jacks appearance in the same game. Congratulations, Joe!

Damm Reaches Double-Figures with LA!

Rugby FC LA battled back into the win column to keep their playoff hopes alive, recording a 45-17 victory over Anthem RC. The score line doesn’t tell the true story of the game, as the USA’s rising stars had kept it close for the majority of the match. Anthem pulled the score back to 26-17 with 10 minutes to go, but 19pts in the final 7 minutes from three RFCLA scores including a pair from Captain Jason Damm gave the impression of a blowout.

Damm’s brace in this game took his career total to 19 tries in 59 games, including 10 in 26 games for Rugby FC LA. He becomes just the 3rd player in RFCLA team history (not including Rugby ATL) to score double-figure tries! A capped USA Eagle, Jason Damm joins another pair of internationally capped RFCLA players with double-figure try counts for the team: Canadian Andrew Coe and Fijian Semi Kunatani, both currently on 11 tries for LA. Congratulations, Jason!

Wet Conditions in NOLA make for a record-setting slugfest!

After rain delays forced kickoff back, Friday night’s NOLA Gold v Miami Sharks game finally got underway, but the wet conditions severely affected play and resulted in a close range, grinding affair with plenty of handling errors. The two teams combined for only 387m gained, a total that has been regular eclipsed by single team totals during this season, even though meters total are generally lower in 2025 than in previous years. The Miami Sharks recorded 219m made in their 19-25 road victory, which is the 4th lowest total ever and sets a new MLR record for the lowest ever winning meters gained total! The previous record was the 243m set by the San Diego Legion in Round 3 of the 2025 season.

The NOLA Gold & Miami Sharks set two of the lowest Meters Made totals of all time!

Although the Miami Sharks’ 219m gained is one of the lowest totals of all time, their opponents set an even lower total. The NOLA Gold amassed only 168m gained in this game, becoming the first team in MLR history to record under 200m in a game, and setting a new lowest ever MLR total! Although their 40.51% possession can’t have helped matters, the lion’s share of the blame for these low totals can be attributed to the miserable conditions. But it just goes to show, even the messy games can result in some standout stats!

It is worth re-iterating that meters gained totals are down across the board in MLR’s 2025 season. Four of the 5 lowest team totals ever have already been recorded this season, including both the lowest winning total, and lowest overall total. Even individual player totals are down. The top Meter Eater heading into Round 14 of the 2025 season is Utah’s Jordan Trainor on an even 800m made. That same total would put Trainor 3rd at the same stage of the 2024 season. There were 9 players over 700m gained at this point of the 2024 season, this year, there are only 5. Some of this may be due to MLR switching analytics partner from Mobii to Oval Insights but no matter the cause, meters are harder to come by this year!

No Negatives in the Western Conference

In what seems like a rarity in a two-conference, 11 team league, there are no teams in Major League Rugby’s Western Conference that have a negative points differential after Round 13! The Utah Warriors and Houston SaberCats are both on +68 points on the season in first and second, respectively, then come the San Diego Legion with a solid +24 in third. The 5th placed Seattle Seawolves actually have the 4th best points differential in the West with +11 and finally, 4th placed Rugby FC LA improve to a +/- of 0 following their victory over Anthem RC!

When adding this to the two teams in the Eastern Conference that have positive points differentials (the New England Free Jacks on a league-best +87, and the Chicago Hounds on +33), SEVEN of Major League Rugby’s 11 teams have a positive (or neutral) points difference! All 4 teams with negative points difference are in the Eastern Conference, including a struggling Anthem RC team on a painful -219. Is this the first time in MLR history where no team in a conference has a negative differential!?

Seattle Seawolves pass 200 First XV selections!

With an impressive road victory over the Western Conference leaders the Utah Warriors, the Seattle Seawolves kept their playoff hopes alive! The 2-time Champs earned three First XV selections in Round 13 as Malembe Mpofu and Lauina Futi earned Team of the Week nods for their efforts, along with Nick Boyer on his Seawolves debut! This took Seattle to 16 selections on the 2025 season (tied for 8th) but more importantly, took them over 200 First XV selections all-time!

The Seattle Seawolves pass 200 First XV selections (all-time)

Now on 201 First XV selections in their history, the Seattle Seawolves are just the 2nd team ever to pass the 200 mark behind their old rivals the San Diego Legion, currently on 209. Unsurprisingly, the Top 5 consists entirely of MLR founding members as these teams have played the most games. The Utah Warriors sit 3rd way back on 164, ahead of the NOLA Gold on 159 and the Houston SaberCats on 148. It will be some time before a 3rd team passes the 200 mark, likely not until 2027. Congratulations, Seawolves!

Wrapping Up

That does it for the Midweek Milestones from a busy Round 13 in Major League Rugby! Four new members of the 50-cap club, some new all-time lows, and everyone is keeping positive in the Western Conference! With Round 14 having already kicked off on Tuesday night, what other standout stats will it treat us to over the weekend? You’ll have to wait and see in next week’s edition of Midweek Milestones!

Thank you for reading this edition of NARDB’s Midweek Milestones article! If you like this series, please get in touch on social media or share this article to help highlight these achievements! If there’s anything that has been missed that you feel is worth mentioning, you can reach out to NARDB via the ‘Contact’ tab on this site. Alternatively, you can reach out to NARDB or James on social media: @MLRStats on Instagram/Threads, @JamDelay & @NARugbyDB on Twitter/X, and @JamDelay & @NARDB on Bluesky! NARDB can also be found on YouTube, at NARStats!

Finally, If you’re looking to get your hands on some of the new Macron merch for 2025 or to add to your jersey collection, visit shopmlr.com to get your hands on all that new gear, and remember to use code ‘MLRSTATS’ at checkout for 15% off your order!


Midweek Milestones: Standout Stats from Round 12 of MLR2025!

NARDatabase

James Deeley

With the Trade/Signing Deadline behind us, Round 12 marks the beginning of the end of the 2025 Major League Rugby season, and the Playoffs are starting creep up. The Quest for the 2025 Shield treated fans to another exciting chapter last week, and this article is here to highlight all of the big numbers from the latest round of MLR action.

Welcome back to Midweek Milestones, the weekly series that shines a light on all of the standout stats from each week of MLR action! The purpose of this article series is to highlight some of the milestones or achievements from around the league that might not otherwise get the coverage they deserve. If you’re a fan of these articles, please go back and read the past editions (if you haven’t already!) and share them with your friends. As is tradition, first up are the appearance achievements!

Appearance Achievements

This week’s installment of Appearance Achievements consist of a new member of the half-century club, as well as four MLR debutants. As the midweek games get underway and teams have to rotate squads due to tight turnarounds between games, and teams are getting a chance to blood more prospects who otherwise might not get their chance. It is entertaining for fans, and informative for teams to see what their prospects can do in a full match environment. Before focusing on the MLR Debutants however, the latest member of the half-century club.

A capped Namibian international and long time NOLA Gold scrumhalf, Damian Stevens finally earned his 50th MLR appearance on his 27th MLR start! Since his debut in 2021, Stevens has scored 10 penalties and 18 conversions from the tee with a 70% success rate, and to celebrate his 50th MLR appearance, he dotted down for his 7th career MLR try to pass 100pts and become the 4th NOLA player to reach 100pts scored for the franchise!

Damian Stevens passes 100pts scored on his 50th MLR Appearance

Stevens appeared in all 16 games for the Gold in his debut season in 2021, but the following year was his best to date. 4 tries and 50pts in 14 games, as well as career highs in both metres gained (273m) and tackles completed (47). Stevens has proved a reliable scrum-half that can deliver off the tee when needed, and has been a staple of the NOLA squad for his 5 seasons in MLR so far. Congratulations, Damian!

Moving on to this week’s MLR debutants, starting in Chicago where the Hounds hosted the Miami Sharks at SeatGeek Stadium, where rain and wind resulted in a low-scoring slugfest in which two Hounds earned their MLR debuts. Lock Tavius Sykora-Matthess and Fullback/wing Peyton Wall both came on with roughly 7 minutes remaining to help the Hounds hold on to a hard fought 14-7 lead and both earn their MLR debuts! Signed as a free agent during the off-season, Iowa native Sykora-Matthess was a wrestler and gridiron football player through high school, and played football at Missouri Southern State University before transferring to Iowa Central Community College and switching his focus to rugby. He toured South America with the USA Falcons in 2022 and joined the American Raptors in 2023, playing in Super Rugby Americas for 2 seasons before joining the Hounds academy side in the fall of 2024 and earning a MLR contract for the 2025 season. Peyton Wall did not sign with the Hounds as a Free Agent. Instead, the Indiana native and USA U23s man was selected 10th overall by Chicago in the 2024 MLR Draft out of Indiana University, playing alongside Sykora-Matthess during the 2024 academy season in the fall, because also earning a MLR contract for the 2025 season. Congratulations, Tavius and Peyton!

Source: @Chicagohoundsrugby via Instagram

Staying in the Eastern Conference and moving to the NOLA Gold, who travelled to California to face the San Diego Legion at Torero Stadium, looking for their first ever victory against their fellow MLR founding member. Although that victory would have to wait a little longer, two Gold players earned their MLR debuts in the 45-36 loss, including a pro rugby debut for 2024 MLR Draftee Dalton Musselman! A Pennsylvania native, Musselman Captained the Penn State Rugby team for 3 of his 5 years there, and was selected 18th overall by the Gold in the 2024 Draft. The USA U23 fly-half came off the bench for the final 10 minutes, and bagged a try assist on Harley Wheeler’s 78th minute try. Making his MLR debut off the bench alongside Musselman, although with a tad more experience, was former All Blacks 7s and Highlanders utility back Vilimone Koroi, who had been suspiciously absent from NOLA Gold lineups through the first half of the 2025 season. Congratulations to both Dalton Musselman and Vilimone Koroi on their MLR debuts!

Result Irregularities!

It took roughly 120 games, but the first draw of the 2025 Major League Rugby season is in the books! The Seattle Seawolves battled to a 26-26 draw with Western Conference rivals Rugby FC LA at Starfire Stadium. Rugby FC LA had the opportunity to take the win following Jason Damm’s late try which coincidentally, is the 100th try in RFCLA history. RFCLA‘s sharpshooter from the tee, Christian Leali’ifano, had already left the game so the conversion fell to Gonzalo Bertranou, who’s attempt sailed wide.

Seattle and LA battle to a 26-26 tie, the first tie of the 2025 season.

This is the 2nd draw in team history for both the Seattle Seawolves and Rugby FC LA, with LA’s first draw being the most recent stalemate in MLR prior to this game, a 22-22 tie against Old Glory DC in Round 6 of the 2024 season. This is the 10th draw in league history and of those 10 ties, nine have finished with scores in the 20s, and three have finished with a score of 26-26!

The first draw of 2025 wasn’t the only unusual result of Round 12. As mentioned already in this article, the Chicago Hounds and Miami Sharks battled to a 14-7 final score at SeatGeek Stadium, a remarkably low scoring affair for Major league Rugby. In fact, this is the lowest scoring game of the 2025 season and, by a remark coincidence, the lowest scoring game since the Dallas Jackals defeated the Seattle Seawolves, also by a score of 14-7 in Round 12 of the 2024 season! Same round, same score, similar team names (Jackals to Hounds, Seawolves to Sharks), what are the chances?!

Unsurprisingly, the combined score of 21 makes this result the lowest scoring game in both Chicago Hounds and Miami Sharks franchise history, but that didn’t stop MLR’s most prolific try scorer from getting on the board. Dylan Fawsitt scored his 62nd MLR try and his 20th for the Chicago Hounds, becoming just the 2nd player to pass 100pts scored with the franchise! Fawsitt sits behind fellow Irish-born USA Eagle Luke Carty (now with the NOLA Gold) on 127pts, and moves ahead of Adriaan Carelse, who has been sat on 97pts for much of the season with Chris Hilsenbeck taking the lead on kicking duties. Congratulations, Dylan!

Lochore sets 2025 High for Tackles!

Three games in 8 days proved to be too much for the Utah Warriors as they fell 28-12 to Old Glory DC in their 2nd game of Round 12. The Warriors picked up a pair of victories during their ‘Storm Week’ however, including a back and forth win over the San Diego Legion during the week! In this first Utah game of Round 12, Frank Lochore recorded 29 completed tackles to set a new 2025 single-game high for tackles by a player, contributing almost 15% of the Warriors’ 210 tackles by himself!

Utah’s Frank Lochore sets new season high for tackles made in a game

Not only is 29 tackles in a single game a new season-high, it’s tied with 3 other players (Matt Heaton: Rd 5 2020, Cory Daniel: Rd 4 2022, and Thomas Tu’avao: Rd 8 2023) for the 3rd highest tackle count in Major League Rugby history! Lochore’s total has only been bettered by Utah teammate Dylan Nel’s 30 tackles in Round 7 of the 2024 season and MLR’s current record holder: Matt Heaton, who completed 32 tackles for Rugby ATL in Round 2 of the 2022 season. Congratulations, Frank!

Wrapping Up

Four MLR debuts, a new member of the half-century club, and some impressive standout stats in this week’s edition of Midweek Milestones! There are no midweek games this week, giving teams a valuable break before a 6-game Round 13 kicks off on Friday night, running through Tuesday! How many standout stats will the next round of MLR action bring? You’ll have to wait for next week’s Midweek Milestones article to find out!

Thank you for reading this edition of NARDB’s Midweek Milestones article! If you like this series, please get in touch on social media or share this article to help highlight these achievements! If there’s anything that has been missed that you feel is worth mentioning, you can reach out to NARDB via the ‘Contact’ tab on this site. Alternatively, you can reach out to NARDB or James on social media: @MLRStats on Instagram/Threads, @JamDelay & @NARugbyDB on Twitter/X, and @JamDelay & @NARDB on Bluesky! NARDB also has a Youtube channel: NARStats!

Midweek Milestones: Standout Stats from Round 9 of MLR2025!

NARDatabase

James Deeley

After Round 9, every team in Major League Rugby has played 8 games with the exception of the Seattle Seawolves and Utah Warriors, who have played 7. This means that the majority of teams have played half of their games in the 2025 regular season! Some, like the Chicago Hounds are flying high with a 7-1 record, while Anthem RC are still after that first victory at 0-8 and teams that started strong like the San Diego Legion are struggling. The mid-season comes quick! Lets dive into some of the standout stats from Round 9 of the 2025 MLR season.

Welcome back to Midweek Milestones, the weekly article that highlights the biggest milestones from around Major League Rugby, whether achieved by teams, players, or both. The purpose of these weekly articles is to highlight achievements (both big, and small) that may have gone under the radar in order to give them the attention they deserve, as well as to keep fans informed of some of the big milestones and the less publicized (but no less deserving) achievements around the League for each week! If you want to read previous Midweek Milestones articles, feel free to search ‘Midweek Milestones’, or click on the category just below the title of this article.

RFCLA’s new All-Time Top Scorer

After the demise of the LA Giltinis in 2022, Rugby FC LA is Major League Rugby’s second attempt at putting a team in the City of Angels. Relocated from Atlanta after a new ownership group purchased the Rugby ATL franchise, RFCLA played their first season in 2024, one of MLR’s most recent additions. The team is already developing quite a history, however. Building a fierce rivalry with California neighbors the San Diego Legion, and going toe to toe with the best in the Western Conference, RFCLA are definitely not to be taken lightly.

Christian Leali’ifano becomes RFCLA’s all-time top scorer

For their sophomore season in 2025, LA brought in big MLR names like Billy Meakes and Reece MacDonald, as well as superstars on the word stage like Argentina’s Gonzalo Bertranou, or dual-capped international Christian Leali’ifano, who has been like clockwork from the tee in the first half of this season. Leali’ifano has successfully kicked 25 of his 27 attempts from the tee and is one of only 3 players to have passed 50pts scored so far this season. His 56pts scored in just 7 games also makes him Rugby FC LA‘s all-time leading scorer, ahead of Semi Kunatani who has 54pts off of his 10 tries from last season (including two 7-pointers). Although it’s a young team, becoming the top scorer of a franchise is an impressive achievement, congratulations, Christian!

In the same game that Leali’ifano became RFCLA’s top scorer, Canadian speedster Andrew Coe moved into T-3rd on list, becoming just the 2nd player in team history to reach 10 tries scored with RFCLA behind the aforementioned Semi Kunatani! Coe’s 10th try for LA draws him level with Dan Hollinshead on 50pts and with Hollinshead having recently signed with the New England Free Jacks, Coe looks likely to move ahead of him this season. Congratulations, Andrew!

Team Milestones

Coming off of a few disappointing results in previous weeks, not many people gave the Miami Sharks much of a chance heading into the stronghold that is SaberCats Stadium to face Houston, and yet in this battle of land v sea, the Sharks upset the hosts to claim their first victory since Round 3! Their 31-22 victory lifts the Sharks over 500pts scored as a team, to 512 points scored as a franchise in MLR. Josiah Morra’s try on the stroke of half-time of his Miami Sharks debut (after being loaned there from the Free Jacks) was the score that lifted the Sharks over 500pts. Congratulations, Miami!

Staying in the Eastern Conference, the Sharks weren’t the only team to hit a milestone during Round 9. Heading up to Chicago, where the Hounds held off a spirited Anthem RC side for a 28-20 victory, their 7th win of the season and 19th as a team! With a bonus point victory, this takes the Hounds over 100pts in NARDB’s All-Time MLR Standings, but there’s a big caveat: playoff games are knockout and do not award any points. For the purposes of NARDB’s All-Time Standings, playoff games are included and award points as though they were regular season games.

Using this format, the Chicago Hounds have earned 6pts from playoff games, and 97 from regular season games. It’s a bit convoluted, but there is some value in having an all-time standings table that includes every MLR game ever played. The All-Time Standings page contains a table for every MLR game ever played, as well as all regular season games and all playoff games as separate tables.

Gold Rack Up a Half-Century in New Orleans!

The 2025 season has not began as well as the NOLA Gold would have hoped, managing just 1 win through their first 6 games. However, they have since rattled off two victories in quick succession including a statement 51-29 win over Eastern Conference rivals Old Glory DC in front of a home crowd while wearing their very sharp black city edition jerseys. With 7 tries and 51 points scored this ties a NOLA Gold Franchise record set in Round 2 of the 2021 season for points scored in a match, after a 51-28 victory over Rugby United New York on March 27th, 2021, almost an identical score! This is the first time that the Gold have scored over 50pts in a game since Round 15 of the 2022 season when they secured a 50-21 victory on May 14th, 2022, also against Old Glory DC.

NOLA Gold tie Franchise record for points scored, pass 2,500pts all-time

There’s plenty more to celebrate if you’re a NOLA Gold fan, though. By scoring 4+ tries in Round 9, the Gold secured a much needed try bonus point, which is the 50th Try BP that they have earned in their history! NOLA become the 3rd team to reach 50 Try BPs in MLR (4th if you include the playoffs, but they don’t award table points) behind the San Diego Legion (56) and the Utah Warriors (52). The Gold’s 51pts also takes the team over the 2,500pts scored milestone, becoming just the 5th team to pass 2.5k points scored as a franchise! They now sit on 2,547, with Jonah Mau’s early try in the 2nd minute carrying the Gold over the 2,500 mark.

And there’s even more to celebrate for the Gold! In the same game, Xavier Mignot picked up his 4th, 5th, AND 6th tries of the 2025 season to record his first MLR hat trick, and the 6th hat trick by a NOLA Gold player! He is the 46th MLR player to record a hat trick in the competition, claiming MLR’s 51st hat trick. Congratulations, Xavier!

Appearance Achievements

As usual, there were a number of landmark appearances in Round 9 comprised of a pair of MLR debuts, and another five players all earning their 50th appearance! The two debutants both earned their first MLR appearance in the same game, one for either side of a Western Conference clash between Rugby FC LA and the Utah Warriors. Making his debut first was US-Eligible New Zealander Cole Semu, who came on for the Utah Warriors in the 71st minute and made 3 tackles to help secure the win for the Warriors. Semu was drafted 28th overall by the Warriors out of BYU in the 2024 draft, and he has already played with the USA U18, U20, and U23 sides. Coming on in the final minute of the match for Rugby FC LA was US-born Australian dual-codes player Robert Mapa. The former Brothers Rugby man was included in the LA matchday 23 once already in 2025, but didn’t see action until Round 9 when he made 3m and completed a tackle in his roughly 1 minute of game time. Both young players are now blooded in Major League Rugby, will we see them again soon?

Moving over to the cross-conference clash between the Miami Sharks and the Houston SaberCats in Florida where one player from either side celebrated reaching a half-century of Major League Rugby appearances! For the hosting Miami Sharks, Irish born back rower Ronan Foley played his 50th game, earning his 5th start in as many games for the Sharks after joining the Florida team this season following the demise of the Dallas Jackals. Along with Miami this year and Dallas in 2024, Foley has represented the Seattle Seawolves (2023 – 3 tries in 11 games, 8 starts) and the Toronto Arrows (2021-2022 – 3 tries in 19 games, 16 starts), where he had a standout 2022 season. He racked up over 1,000m gained as a forward and completed 184 tackles, both remain career highs. Foley earned a Team of the Week selection on his 50th MLR cap for his performance in Miami’s surprise victory over Houston. Speaking of the SaberCats, despite the defeat they were able to celebrate the 50th MLR appearance of South African lock Justin Basson, who has started 41 of his 50 MLR games between Rugby ATL (2022-2023) Houston (2024-), scoring 7 tries and averaging 144 tackles per season. Congratulations to both Ronan and Justin!

Source: @HoustonSaberCats via Instagram

Staying in the South but travelling to New Orleans and the Gold Mine, which saw another three players celebrate their 50th Major League Rugby appearance, beginning with the hosting NOLA Gold and 2021 MLR Champion, Luke Carty. the USA Capped Irishman began his MLR career with the LA Giltinis in 2021, earning 18 appearances including 15 during their Shield-winning season in 2021. Following the withdrawal of the Giltinis, Carty headed to Chicago where he scored a career high 69pts for the Hounds in 2023, totaling 127pts in 27 games in the Windy City, where he remains the Hounds all-time leading scorer. He surprised fans by signing with the NOLA Gold ahead of the 2025 season, where he’s scored 31pts in 5 games so far. In his MLR career, Luke Carty has 1 try and 208pts scored with a 67.74% success rate from the tee (84/124). Congratulations, Luke!

Moving to NOLA’s opposition from Round 9, Old Glory DC, who were able to celebrate a pair of 50th appearances, although they did celebrate one a bit prematurely! Cory Daniel has finished as MLR’s Top Tackler twice already in his career, and is the reigning ‘tackle king’ heading into 2025. Old Glory DC celebrated Daniel’s 50th game with DC after last week’s clash with the Seattle Seawolves, but unfortunately this was only his 49th game… Thankfully, this little faux pas can be forgotten as Daniel has now reached 50 games played with the Flags! A Maryland native, USA Eagle Cory Daniel has spent his entire MLR career with Old Glory DC, starting 45 of his 50 games since 2021 and racking up an incredible 770 tackles. This includes two seasons where he recorded over 250 tackles in a season, in 2022 (255) and in 2024, when he set a MLR record 276. Congratulations, Cory!

Source: @Oldglorydc via Instagram

Although Cory Daniel is the only player in this weeks’ Appearance Achievements section to have played all 50 of his MLR games with Old Glory DC, he’s not the only Flags player to reach the half-century mark. New Zealand utility back Jason Emery also played his 50th MLR game for Old Glory DC in Round 9! Emery started his MLR career with Rugby New York in 2022, scoring 48pts in 17 games as the Ironworkers lifted the Shield that year. Across his two years in New York, Emery scored 8 tries and 123pts in 33 games, starting 29 times. Following the withdrawal of the Ironworkers in 2023, Emery signed in LA for Rugby FC LA‘s inaugural season in 2024 before moving back to the east coast this year with Old Glory DC. In his career to date, Emery has scored 147pts with a 73.02% success rate from the tee (46/63) and started 43 of his 50 MLR games. Congratulations, Jason!

Wrapping Up

A new Top Scorer in Los Angeles, a bumper week for the Gold, another handful of players join the half-century club and that’s not even all of the standout stats from Round 9 of Major League Rugby’s 2025 season! What goodies will Round 10 hold for us as we move into the second half of this season, still no closer to knowing who will come out on top? You’ll have to come back next week to find out!

Thank you for reading! If you like this series, please get in touch on social media and share this article to help highlight these achievements! If there’s anything that has been missed that you feel is worth mentioning, you can reach out to NARDB via the ‘Contact’ tab on this site. Alternatively, you can reach out to NARDB or James on social media: @MLRStats on Instagram/Threads, @JamDelay & @NARugbyDB on Twitter/X, and @JamDelay & @NARDB on Bluesky! NARDB also has a Youtube channel: NARStats!

Finally, If you’re looking to get your hands on some of the new Macron merch for 2025 or add to your jersey collection, visit shopmlr.com to get your hands on that new gear, and remember to use code ‘MLRSTATS’ at checkout for 15% off your order!

Midweek Milestones: Standout Stats from Round 8 of MLR2025!

NARDatabase

James Deeley

Another week of the 2025 Major League Rugby has flown past, and the parity of MLR’s 8th season has arguably never been better. 4 teams in the Eastern Conference won during Round 8, with Rugby FC LA taking the lone victory in the West! Welcome back to Midweek Milestones, a weekly article that highlights the big achievements and standout stats from each round of the MLR season.

If this is your first time reading an article from this series, these weekly articles highlight milestones or standout stats achieved by players and/or teams that may have gone under the radar in order to give them the attention they deserve, as well as to keep fans informed of some of the big milestones and the less publicized (but no less deserving) achievements around the League for each week! If you want to read previous Midweek Milestones articles, feel free to search ‘Midweek Milestones’, or click on the category just below the title of this article!

Beast from the East defeats Best in the West!

The clash of the week for many coming into Round 8 was the San Diego Legion taking on the Chicago Hounds at Torero Stadium. #1 in the West hosting the #1 in the East with the opportunity for the victor to take a commanding hold over their conference! When the dust settled, it was the Chicago Hounds who had emerged as 20-27 winners to stay on top of the Eastern Conference!

The Hounds are developing a reputation as road warriors in 2025. They are currently on a team record 5 game win streak and are yet to lose on the road. Chicago have chalked up road victories against the NOLA Gold, a very impressive Round 1 win over the SaberCats in Houston, and have now handed the San Diego Legion their first home defeat in almost a calendar year! The Legion have not lost at home since a nail-biting 23-24 defeat to the New England Free Jacks in Round 12 of the 2024 season, a span of 321 days! Whats more, it’s the first time that the San Diego Legion have been defeated at Torero Stadium since 26th June, 2021 against the Austin Gilgronis – 1,379 days, although the obvious caveat there is that the Legion did not play at Torero Stadium from 2022-2024.

Legion suffer first home defeat in close to a year

For the San Diego Legion, their 5-game win streak to start the 2025 season seems a very long time ago already. Now sat on a 2-game skid and no longer atop the Western Conference, things don’t get easier for the Legion, as they make their first-ever trip to Quincy to face the resurgent reigning champions, the New England Free Jacks.

LA Make it 4 on the Bounce!

As mentioned above, the Chicago are now on a team-record 5 game win streak, but they aren’t the only team on best-ever form. Rugby FC LA started the season with 3 losses in a row but have since flicked a switch and rattled off 4 wins on the trot, extending a team record win streak following a gutsy 22-24 road victory over the Houston SaberCats! The ‘Cats had the chance to walk away with a draw, but AJ Alatimu‘s last-minute conversion couldn’t curl in, and RFCLA record their first ever victory over their Western Conference rivals!

Between RFCLA and the Chicago Hounds the Western Conference has been blown wide open, with 3 teams separated by 4pts at the top and the Utah Warriors sitting 2pts back with a game in hand! Even the Seattle Seawolves, currently at the bottom of the West, just need a good couple of weeks to get right back in it!

Appearance Achievements

In the now-weekly segment of the Midweek Milestones article, it’s time to recognise the appearance milestones from around MLR during Round 8. This week saw an MLR debut and five players reach 50 appearances, including 3 in one game!

Beginning with the debutant. The San Diego Legion announced the addition of Zak Farrance just before Round 7, and he came off the bench for the Legion in their massive clash with the Chicago Hounds! With experience in the English Championship and nearly a decade of experience playing in France, Farrance made 18 meters and 5 tackles over 32 minutes of game time in his MLR debut. Congratulations Zak, and welcome to MLR!

In the same game that Zak Farrance earned his MLR debut, a trio of players all earned their 50th MLR appearances, including his San Diego Legion teammate, Tavite Lopeti! Raised in the Bay Area, Lopeti represented Saint Mary’s College Gaels and was a Rudy Scholz Award nominee. He declared for the 2021 MLR Draft and was selected 3rd overall by the Seattle Seawolves, with whom he played between 2022-2024. The 2022 MLR Rookie of the Year scored 8 tries in 44 games with Seattle, finishing as MLR Runners-Up in both 2022 and 2024. He left the Seawolves ahead of this season and returned to his home state, signing with the San Diego Legion for 2025. Lopeti becomes just the 2nd MLR Draftee to reach 50 appearances in the competition, and he’s started 38 of his 50 games. Congratulations, Tavite!

Moving over to the Legion’s opposition in Round 8, the Chicago Hounds celebrated a pair of players reaching their half-century of MLR appearances! The first of two Hounds to reach 50 games in MLR is test capped Canadian, Mason Flesch. The Cobourg, ON native began his MLR career with the Toronto Arrows, representing MLR’s lone Canadian outfit from 2021-23, earning 22 starts in 28 games. Following the withdrawal of the team, Flesch followed his Arrows and national team captain Lucas Rumball to Chicago where he has scored 6 tries in 23 games (22 starts). He set personal bests across the board for the Hounds in 2024 and is enjoying another stellar season in 2025. Congratulations, Mason!

Source: @chicagohoundsrugby via Instagram

Coming into the game from the Chicago Hounds bench and earning his 50th cap alongside Mason Flesch was scrum-half Jason Higgins. Born in Ireland, Higgins’ career shares similarities with Flesch’s. Both are former Toronto Arrows that have been test capped for Canada! Higgins represented the Arrows for only a season, scoring 4 tries in 13 games (3 starts) in 2021 before signing with the San Diego Legion from 2022-23. He finished as a MLR runner-up with the Legion in 2023 and scored 8 tries in 20 games over his two seasons in California. Higgins has represented the Chicago Hounds after being traded there in 2023 and has scored another 4 tries in 17 games for a total of 16 tries and 21 starts in his 50 games in MLR. Higgins is also the first (and so far, only) player in MLR history to record hat tricks with multiple teams, having scored one for the Legion in 2022, and another for the Hounds in 2024. Congratulations, Jason!

Staying on the topic of test-capped Canadians, over in Texas Andrew Coe made his 50th MLR appearance as Rugby FC LA earned an impressive win over the Houston SaberCats! A native of Markham, ON, Coe’s MLR journey started when he joined Rugby New York for the 2022 season. He scored 13 tries in 32 games (30 starts) for the Ironworkers, helping them lift the Shield in his debut season in 2022. Coe signed with Rugby FC LA after the Ironworkers withdrew from MLR in 2023, and has scored another 9 tries to take his total to 22 tries in 50 games (48 starts), along with 228 tackles and over 3,400m made in his MLR career to date. Congratulations, Andrew!

Source: @rugbyfcla via Instagram

And to wrap up the new members of the half-century club for this week is 2024 Player of the Year, Wayne van der Bank! A back-to-back MLR Champion with the New England Free Jacks in 2023 & 2024, van der Bank entered MLR in 2022, and has earned all 50 of his appearances with the Free Jacks. He has started 46 times and scored 16 tries including 10 in the 2024 season. The Pretoria native has recently passed 500 career tackles and has 3,139m made to date! Unfortunately, van der Bank’s 50th game did not last long, as he was substituted after only 8 minutes due to a head knock. Hopefully this is precautionary and we’ll see him back for his 51st game soon. Congratulations, Wayne!

Balekana Bags MLR’s 50th Hatty!

Sticking with the New England Free Jacks, their dominant 43-6 win over the Miami Sharks in Quincy was helped in part by Paula Balekana’s 3 tries, recording a hat trick! Given how prolific a try scorer he is, it’s amazing that this is the only first hat trick of Balekana’s MLR career! It takes his career total to 35 tries, putting the Free Jacks’ Fijian Flyer 3rd all-time, behind only Riekert Hattingh (45) and Dylan Fawsitt (59) in terms of tries scored.

Although this was the first hat trick in Paula Balekana’s MLR career, it’s not the first hat trick by a New England Free Jacks player, and it’s definitely not the first hat trick in MLR history. In fact, Balekana is the 6th player to record a hatty as a Free Jack and the 45th player in league history! With Jason Higgins and Dewald Kotze recording 2 hat tricks each and Seattle Seawolves’ Lauina Futi recording 3, this makes Paula Balekana’s hat trick on Sunday the 50th triple in Major League Rugby History! Congratulations!

NOLA’s Du Plessis Reaches New Heights

As Major League Rugby marches closer to it’s 10th season, there are fewer and fewer players around the league who have been here from the start. At this point, they’re pretty much all legends of this league, and that definitely applies to the NOLA Gold’s JP Du Plessis. The South African center spent 3 seasons with the San Diego Legion in the early years of the league, finishing as a MLR runner-up in 2019, the same year that he was named MLR Back of the Year on the back of a 1,200m, 200 tackle year. He scored 9 tries in 26 games (all starts) for the Legion before moving to New Orleans and joining the Gold, who he’s represented in every MLR season since.

JP Du Plessis has scored 22 tries in his 89 MLR games to date (86 starts) and recorded more tackles than any other back in league history, 868. He’s recorded 3 seasons with over 1,000m made including a career high of 1,533 in 2022, and added 73m during Round 8 of the 2025 season to become the first player in MLR history to eclipse SIX THOUSAND meters in the competition! Now sat on 6,026m, Du Plessis has over almost 800m more than the next nearest active player (Riekert Hattingh – 5,296m) and could get close to 7,000m in 2025 if he keeps it up. Congratulations, JP!

Wrapping Up

Major League Rugby’s 50th hat trick, five players join the half-century club, and JP Du Plessis reaches a milestone never seen before in MLR in this week’s edition of Midweek Milestones! What standout stats will Round 9 have for us? Be sure to check back next week to find out!

Thank you for reading! If you like this series, please get in touch on social media and share this article to help highlight these achievements! If there’s anything that has been missed that you feel is worth mentioning, you can reach out to NARDB via the ‘Contact’ tab on this site. Alternatively, you can reach out to NARDB or James on social media: @MLRStats on Instagram/Threads, @JamDelay & @NARugbyDB on Twitter/X, and @JamDelay & @NARDB on Bluesky! NARDB also has a Youtube channel: NARStats!

Finally, If you’re looking to get your hands on some of the new Macron merch for 2025 or add to your jersey collection, visit shopmlr.com to get your hands on that new gear, and remember to use code ‘MLRSTATS’ at checkout for 15% off your order!

Midweek Milestones: Standout Stats from Round 7 of MLR2025!

NARDatabase

James Deeley

Round 7 of the 2025 Major League Rugby season saw all 5 games on Saturday for the 3rd week in a row, with every game kicking off within 3 hours of each other, so tries, kick-offs, and (most importantly) stats were coming thick and fast! Welcome back to Midweek Milestones, a weekly article that highlights the big achievements and standout stats from each round of the MLR season.

In case you haven’t read any of the previous Midweek Milestones, these weekly articles highlight milestones or standout stats achieved by players and teams that might have gone under the radar in order to bring more attention to them, as well as inform fans of some of the big milestones and the less publicized (but no less deserving) achievements around the League for each match week. If you want to read previous Midweek Milestones articles, feel free to search ‘Midweek Milestones’, or click on the category just below the title of this article!

NOLA Gold reach a century!

Following Utah last week, the NOLA Gold played in their 100th MLR game to become the 3rd team to play their century game this season, and the 5th team in MLR history to reach triple-figures! The Gold broke a strange pattern in their 100th game, becoming both the first team to play their 100th game in front of a home crowd, and the first team to face an expansion team in their 100th game, falling 18-20 to the Chicago Hounds in a nail-biter!

With the NOLA Gold reaching their 100th game, all five of the still active MLR founding member teams have now reached a century of games played! It’ll be a little while before the next team reaches this milestone. The New England Free Jacks are closest, on only 81 games, so we’ll have to wait until at least the 2nd half of the 2026 season!

LA & DC play a Slobberknocker!

The Flags travelled to Los Angeles to face RFCLA in a chaotic cross-conference clash! There were 13 tries in total with a final score of 54-44 to the hosts in what was the 3rd highest scoring game in Major League Rugby history! The total of 98pts falls just behind the 108pts scored in a 49-59 victory for Rugby New York in 2022, and the 101pts scored in a 42-59 victory for Houston the week before!

Unfortunately for Old Glory DC, they have now featured in all of the 3 highest scoring games in MLR history, and have been on the losing side of all three. For 2025, DC seem to be following a pattern of alternating wins & losses. So far this season they have always followed up a loss with a win, and always lost the game after a win. Are they destined for another .500 season?

Old Glory DC have featured in the 3 highest scoring games in MLR history

Moving over to the home side, Rugby FC LA were able to hold on for a victory despite a handful of cards including two yellows and a red to scrum-half Gonzalo Bertranou. This victory puts LA on their longest win streak as a franchise, winning 3 on the trot to even up their record at 3-3 so far in 2025! Helping them to that victory was Christian Dyer, a California native and USA Eagle who joined RFCLA from the Houston SaberCats ahead of the 2025 season. Dyer scored his first try with his new team in this game, also marking the 20th try of his MLR career and entering the Top 20 players all time, tied for 20th with the likes of Sam Windsor and JP Smith. Congratulations, Christian!

Appearance Achievements

Checking in on some appearance milestones for last weekend, there was a 50th appearance for the Seattle Seawolves as well as a pair of MLR debuts which is where we’ll start, with Old Glory DC. The section above covers much of the Flags’ game from Round 7, but it didn’t highlight a MLR debut for Welshman Joe Rees. A native of Swansea and former Wales U20 prop, Rees was signed early in the off-season from the English Championship, where he captained London Scottish. Congratulations, Joe, and welcome to MLR!

Round 7’s other debutant was also in the Eastern Conference, for the other team in red, white, & blue, the New England Free Jacks! Canadian Sevens star Josiah Morra came off the bench in the Free Jacks’ sensational comeback victory over the Utah Warriors. Morra is capped for Canada at both Sevens and 15s levels, and actually featured for the Ontario Arrows (the precursor of MLR’s Toronto Arrows) in a 40-14 victory against the Free Jacks in New England’s first ever game as a team. Morra was on the bench earlier this season but didn’t feature, so congratulations on your debut Josiah, and welcome to MLR!

Heading to the Western Conference to recognise a half-century of appearances, Seattle Seawolves center Dan Kriel earned his 50th Major League Rugby appearance in a hard-fought 25-17 victory over Anthem RC in front of a home crowd! The Cape Town native and brother of Springbok Jesse Kriel, Dan joined the Seawolves for the 2022 season and has been a mainstay of the Seattle lineup ever since, becoming the 7th player to earn 50 appearances for the Seawolves. He has recorded well over 3,000m made in his MLR career to date as well as just shy of 450 tackles, scoring 11 tries and 55pts in total. Kriel and the Seawolves have finished as MLR Runners up twice, in 2022 and in 2024, and he was the recipient of the S. Marcus Calloway Award in 2023, honoring the player who shows remarkable passion, excellence, and integrity on and off the field. Congratulations on your 50th MLR appearance, Dan!

Source: @SeawolvesRugby via Instagram

Scoring Standouts

Moving from appearance milestones to standout stats around scoring. There are now 14 teams in Major League Rugby that have scored over 1,000pts, after the Chicago Hounds reached 4-figures during their hard fought victory over the NOLA Gold on Saturday. The Hounds were sat on 996pts scored coming into Round 7, and Dylan Fawsitt’s try (who else?) just before half-time took Chicago over the 1000pts mark! With a 18-20 victory they now sit on 1,016pts scored as a team, and begin the long march to 2k.

Moving from team scoring milestones to player milestones, and moving from Chicago in the Eastern Conference to the Houston SaberCats in the West. The ‘Cats dominated the San Diego Legion (who seem to hate playing at SaberCats Stadium!) to put an end to the Legion’s 5 game win streak, and extend their own win streak to 5 games. South African scrumhalf André Warner dotted down for the SaberCats’ first try in a 34-14 victory, marking his 10th try in MLR! Warner is only the 8th Houston player to record 10+ tries with the team after recording 8 in 2024 and bagging his 2nd in 2025. Congratulations, André!

Staying on the Houston SaberCats, in the same game that André Warner recorded his 10th MLR try, AJ Alatimu came off the bench and slotted a penalty kick to pass 100pts scored as a member of the Houston SaberCats! Alatimu, who started his MLR career with the Seattle Seawolves in 2021, is only the 3rd SaberCat to pass 100pts with the team, behind Davy Coetzer (340) and Sam Windsor (432)! This proved to be a very important 3pts for Alatimu because not only did he pass 100pts with Houston, but it took his career total to 422, passing San Diego Legion legend Joe Pietersen (420) for the 2nd highest poinst scorer in MLR history! He now only sits behind Sam Windsor (595). Congratulations, AJ!

AJ Alatimu becomes MLR’s 2nd Highest Scorer

AJ Alatimu moving into 2nd wasn’t the only bit of movement at the top of the All-Time Scorers List! The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that the above graphic lists Old Glory DC‘s Jason Robertson in 5th place All-Time which, after this weekend, he is! The Kiwi playmaker recorded 13pts in the Flags’ high scoring defeat to Rugby FC LA, setting the MLR Round-High in points for a second week in a row, moving ahead of Mack Mason and into the Top 5! He’s almost guaranteed to pass Toronto Arrows legend Sam Malcolm for 4th this season, too. Congratulations, Jason!

Wrapping Up

The last active founding member team reaches a century of games played, Old Glory DC‘s unfavourable record in high-scoring games, and plenty of scoring & appearances achievements in this week’s edition of Midweek Milestones! Be sure to check back next week to see what standout stats Round 8 of the 2025 Major League Rugby season holds!

Thank you for reading! If you like this series, please get in touch on social media and share this article to help highlight these achievements! If there’s anything that has been missed that you feel is worth mentioning, you can reach out to NARDB via the ‘Contact’ tab on this site. Alternatively, you can reach out to NARDB or James on social media: @MLRStats on Instagram/Threads, @JamDelay & @NARugbyDB on Twitter/X, and @JamDelay and @NARDB on Bluesky!

Finally, If you’re looking to get your hands on some of the new Macron merch for 2025 or add to your jersey collection, visit shopmlr.com to get your hands on that new gear, and remember to use code ‘MLRSTATS’ at checkout for 15% off your order!

Midweek Milestones: Standout Stats from Round 6 of MLR2025!

NARDatabase

James Deeley

Round 6 roughly marks the final round of the first third of the 2025 Major League Rugby season, and so far it’s been a thriller. There are historically good teams faltering, there are written off teams on win streaks, and Anthem RC creep closer to that first victory. Welcome to the Midweek Milestones article for Round 6!

Just in case you haven’t read any of the previous Midweek Milestones articles, these weekly posts highlight milestones or standout stats achieved by players and teams that might have gone under the radar in order to bring more attention to them, as well as inform fans of some of the big milestones and the less publicized (but no less deserving) achievements around the League for each match week.

Utah join the 100 Club!

The Utah Warriors join the likes of the Seattle Seawolves, San Diego Legion, and Houston SaberCats to become the 4th team in MLR history to reach 100 games played in the competition! They are the 2nd team to win their 100th MLR fixture, claiming a 27-30 road victory over the Seattle Seawolves to secure their 41st victory as a team. The Warriors have an all-time record of 41-3-56, which includes both 98 regular season games (41-3-54) and 2 playoff appearances (0-2).

The Utah Warriors’ 100th game falls in line with a very strange pattern. All 4 teams that have reached 100 games played in MLR have played their 100th match on the road against a fellow founding member. No team has played their 100th game in front of a home crowd yet!

Heartbreak for Anthem RC

The USA’s rising rugby stars are still looking for their first win as a franchise and came agonizingly close in Round 6 as Anthem RC had their hearts broken by a last minute Davy Coetzer penalty. The aspiring Eagles fell 45-46 in Charlotte, having set new single game franchise records for points scored (45) and tries scored (7). The 45pts scored by Anthem RC in this game accounted for over 10% of the points ever scored by the team!

As further proof that Anthem are closing the gap, their average losing margin in 2024 was an eyebrow raising 23pts. So far in 2025 that has fallen to 15pts and in their last 3 games the gap is, on average, just 2pts. Anthem picked up 1 losing BP all season last year, but have picked up 3 in a row in 2025 (including this game) and have secured try BPs in two of those as well. Although it might not seem like much, Anthem RC are moving in the right direction and it’s just a matter of time before they claim that elusive first win. Will it come before their next bye week in Round 13?

Kicking Credits

A handful of kickers made noteworthy news over the weekend, whether that be for reaching new scoring milestones or other standout stats.

We begin with Jason Robertson, who had arguably a First XV-worthy performance for Old Glory DC as they routed their Eastern Conference rivals the New England Free Jacks in the first of two ‘Red, White, & Blue Bowl’ matchups in 2025. Not only did Robertson pass the 2,000m made mark to become the 5th player to reach 2,000m made with the Flags, but he scored 13pts including a rare drop goal. Amazingly, this is the FIFTH drop goal of Jason Robertson’s MLR career and he now take sole possession of the record for the most drop goals scored in MLR history! What’s more, Robertson missed another drop goal attempt in the same game! He passes San Diego Legion legend Joe Pietersen, who had 4.

On the subject of the San Diego Legion, they recorded a convincing victory over the Miami Sharks in Florida, with Lincoln McClutchie assuming the role of place kicker. The New Zealander converted 3 tries for 6pts, pushing his MLR and Legion total past the 100pt mark to 104! McClutchie is just the 5th player to pass 100pts scored for the Legion, and is currently sat on 23pts this season to add to his 81pts from 2024. Congratulations, Lincoln!

A little way up the road from McClutchie is USA Eagle Luke Carty, who’s enjoying his first season in New Orleans with the Gold. Carty banked another 2pts in the Gold‘s 24-31 loss to Rugby FC LA over the weekend to just nudge his career total over 200pts after coming off of the bench. Although his time with NOLA has only just begun, Carty has already racked up 24pts with the Gold this season and is only the 16th player in MLR history (9th active player) to pass 200pts in the competition! Congratulations, Luke!

NOLA Gold’s Luke Carty

Staying on the subject of kickers but moving to the Gold’s opposition this weekend, Rugby FC LA. The 2nd incarnation of a MLR team in Los Angeles appear to be finding their groove, securing back-to-back victories the last few weeks. In fact, with another 31pts scored over the weekend, RFCLA have become the first 2024 Expansion Team to pass 500pts scored as a franchise! They sit on 506pts scored in total, with Andrew Coe‘s 58th minute try taking the lads from Los Angeles over the milestone.

A key part of Rugby FC LA‘s scoring has been international rugby veteran Christian Leali’ifano. Test capped for both Australia and Samoa, Leali’ifano is currently tied as MLR’s leading points scorer with 40 on the season so far. Coming into Round 6, he had a flawless record from the tee with 15/15, the best record in MLR! It turns out that the 37yo is human after all however, as Leali’ifano missed his first two place kicks of the season in Round 6. Let’s blame them on the wind, shall we?

Appearance Achievements

In what is quickly becoming it’s own segment within these Midweek Milestones articles, there were a number of players celebrating milestone appearances over the weekend, starting with a pair of MLR debuts!

After being named on the bench in Round 5 but not used, Hawaiian former football player Isikeli Kava earned his Major League Rugby debut on the 2nd attempt when he came off the bench for Old Glory DC in the 77th minute of their convincing 28-14 victory over the New England Free Jacks. Kava played with the American Raptors crossover program before joining the Flags for the 2025 season, and made 3 tackles in his MLR debut. Congratulations, Isikeli!

MLR Debutant Isikeli Kava (center)


Round 6’s other debutant was another #18. Nova Scotia native and test-capped Canadian Prop Tyler Matchem came off the bench for the NOLA Gold in the 67th minute to earn his first MLR appearance and help the Gold to salvage 2pts from their 24-31 defeat to Rugby FC LA. Congratulations, Tyler!

From debuts to half-centuries, three US-eligible players reached 50 appearances in MLR over the course of Round 6, including a very impressive MLR first for one of them! Starting on the West Coast with the San Diego Legion, Australian back rower and 2021 MLR Champion Christian Poidevin earned his 50th MLR appearance and his 44th start in the competition! The son of 1991 RWC Winner Simon Poidevin, Christian earned 28 appearances with the LA Giltinis between 2021-2022 before joining the Legion in 2023 where he has earned 22 further appearances. Poidevin is eligible for the USA through his Chicago-born mother, and has scored 13 tries in MLR including 3 in 5 games to start 2025! To date, he has made 1,429m in possession and completed 591 tackles with a high of 200 in 2022. Congratulations, Christian!

Staying in the Western Conference but moving to the Lone Star State, Houston SaberCats’ forward Emmanuel Albert also reaches his 50th appearance in MLR! The Minnesota native has developed into a certified MLR starter over his 4 years in Texas, with 11 of his 14 career starts coming in the last 2 seasons, including 5 starts in 5 games so far in 2025. Albert has scored 3 MLR tries and is approaching both 1,000m made in possession & 350 tackles completed and, after setting career highs in both categories last season, is well on track to do the same again this year! Albert was drafted 2nd overall by the Houston SaberCats in the 2021 MLR Collegiate Draft out of Lindenwood University, meaning that his half-century of games comes with an MLR first: Emmanuel Albert is the first MLR Draftee to reach 50 games played in the competition! This is a testament to the viability of the draft and the player pathway system, as well as to Albert’s hard work and determination. Congratulations, Emmanuel!

Source: @usmlr via Instagram

The final player to enter the 50-cap club in Round 6 is Ex-Rugby New York Ironworker and 2022 MLR Champion, Connor Buckley! The Iona College alum earned his 19th appearance (11th start) for Old Glory DC in their victory over New England, to add to his 31 games for New York between 2021-2023! Buckley has 30 starts in his MLR career and 9 tries including the first (and to date, only) playoff hat trick in MLR history in the 2024 Eastern Conference Semifinal, also against New England. Congratulations, Connor!

Wrapping Up

Another team joins the 100 club, a trio of kickers reach new scoring milestones, and a handful of players earn appearance achievements! That does it for all the standout stats from another week of Major league Rugby action, and the Midweek Milestones article for Round 6 of the 2025 season. Be sure to check back next week for Midweek Milestones from the 7th match week of the 2025 Major League Rugby season, we we see more MLR firsts?

If you like this series, please get in touch on social media and share this article to help highlight these achievements! If there’s anything that has been missed that you feel is worth mentioning, you can reach out to NARDB via the ‘Contact’ tab on this site. Alternatively, you can reach out to NARDB or James on social media: @MLRStats on Instagram/Threads, @JamDelay & @NARugbyDB on Twitter/X, and @JamDelay and @NARDB on Bluesky!

Finally, If you’re looking to get your hands on some of the new Macron merch for 2025 or add to your jersey collection, visit shopmlr.com to get your hands on that new gear, and remember to use code ‘MLRSTATS’ at checkout for 15% off your order!

Midweek Milestones: Standout Stats from Round 2 of MLR2025!

NARDatabase

James Deeley

Round 2 of Major League Rugby’s 2025 season is already in the books, and early bye weeks are already playing their part on this young season with only 4 games last weekend. Luckily, there was no shortage of stats to give us plenty to talk about in this 2nd edition of Midweek Milestones!

Midweek Milestones is a weekly series of articles that aims to highlight milestones achieved by players and/or teams that may go under the radar otherwise, but are no less worthy of recognition and praise. This series of articles will be released midweek (clue is in the name…) each week, and will take milestones from the latest round of MLR matches during the 2025 season.

Dylan Fawsitt: MLR’s First Centurion!

It was close to impossible to miss the congratulations from around the league (and indeed, the world!) for ‘The Butcher’ this weekend, but just in case: Dylan Fawsitt became the first player in Major League Rugby history to reach 100 games played in the competition! The Chicago Hounds couldn’t secure the victory, but that shouldn’t take anything away from this outstanding achievement. This article will focus on a few of the numbers from Fawsitt’s exceptional MLR career, but an excellent article on Fawsitt’s story can be found below, written by Joe Harvey:

https://www.majorleague.rugby/news/the-man-they-call-butcher-introducing-dylan-fawsitt-as-the-first-mlr-centurion/

A stalwart of MLR since it’s inaugural season in 2018, many fans will be familiar with the USA-capped Irishman from his time playing with New York between 2019-2023, where he lifted the Shield in 2022 and scored over 40 tries. However, many may forget that his first MLR try came with the Glendale Raptors during the 2018 season, where he earned his first 8 MLR appearances, starting 6 times and finishing as an MLR Runner-Up.

As mentioned, Fawsitt became a prolific try scorer with New York and that has continued with the Chicago Hounds. The Butcher has 16 tries in 20 games for the Hounds since joining them for the 2024 season following the demise of the Ironworkers, and even added his league-leading 58th MLR try in his 100th MLR game alongside former Raptors team mate, Bryce Campbell. Fawsitt’s 58th try takes his points total to 290, good enough for 10th on MLR’s all time list, without a single place kick (although there have been a couple of famous 50:22s!).

Perhaps the most incredible stat around Dylan Fawsitt’s monumental achievement is that he has appeared in more MLR games than 9 of the 11 teams competing in Major League Rugby’s 2025 season. This includes 3 founder clubs (the Houston SaberCats, Utah Warriors, and NOLA Gold) that have been competing since the inaugural season in 2018!

San Diego Run Riot in The Queen City!

From MLR’s first Centurion, to the Legion. San Diego continued their impressive start to the season with an 8-try rout of Anthem RC on the road. Surprisingly for MLR’s winningest franchise, their 5-52 road victory was only the 3rd time in franchise history that the Legion have scored 50+ points in a game, and they were just 1pt behind their single game record (14-53 against Dallas in 2022). They did however, set a new franchise record for their biggest ever winning margin of 47pts, surpassing the 39pts set in that 2022 game against Dallas.

Named as MLR’s Team of the Week for Round 2, the San Diego Legion scored 8 tries including Tomas Aoake‘s 2nd in as many games, becoming just the 2nd player to reach 20 tries scored for the Legion behind Nate Augspurger who recorded 22 tries while in San Diego. Congratulations, Tomas! On the Legion bench while Aoake scored his 20th try was new signing for 2025, Alesana Pohla. He was acquired from the Utah Warriors, where he played in 2024 and came off the bench for the second half to earn his San Diego Legion debut. What Pohla probably didn’t realise is that in doing so, he became the 150th different player to represent San Diego in an MLR game. Congratulations, Alesana!

Coetzer Enters Elite Company!

The Houston SaberCats get out of the starting blocks with their first win of 2025 over a tenacious Rugby FC LA team in California, following their surprise defeat against the Chicago Hounds in Round 1. Sticking with the sprinting analogy, the ‘Cats fell at the final hurdle a number of times as they were held up over the line, but eventually got things clicking and ended up scoring 7 tries, 3 of which were converted by South African fly-half, Davy Coetzer. Over his 4 seasons with the SaberCats, Coetzer has been a regular behind the kicking tee, finishing 2nd in MLR Scoring in 2023 with a personal best of 135pts. His 6pts on Sunday took his MLR total over the 300pt mark, to 302!

With his 16 tries (one 7-pointer), 20 successful penalties, 80 conversions and success rate off the tee of basically an even 70%, Coetzer is just the 9th player in Major League Rugby history to pass the 300pts scored mark! US fans should keep an eye on Coetzer if they aren’t already, as he’s expressed an interest in pursuing Eagles eligibility and with plenty of runway left this season, it’s possible that he could reach 400pts scored in MLR and enter a truly legendary group.

Damm Reaches Half-Century!

Perhaps slightly eclipsed by Fawsitt’s century of appearances was another appearance milestone from a USA Eagle over in Los Angeles. Rugby FC LA Captain Jason Damm earned his 50th MLR appearance in his 17th game for the team, the very same game where Davy Coetzer surpassed the 300pt mark!

Like Fawsitt, Damm began his MLR career with the Glendale Raptors, where he earned 3 appearances and his first MLR start in 2019. Most fans familiar with Damm will know that his career really took off with Rugby ATL, however. The Marietta, Georgia native played for his hometown MLR team between 2020-2023, scoring 8 tries and earning 30 of his 50 appearances with the RATLers as well as finishing as a MLR Runner-Up in 2021. His performances in Atlanta earned him his test debut for the USA against Chile in July of 2022.

Source: @Rugbyfcla via Twitter/X

Jason Damm followed the team to Los Angeles following the sale of Rugby ATL and it’s relocation to the West Coast in 2023, joining Rugby FC LA for their inaugural season in 2024 where he had a career year. He earned 15 appearances with a career high 14 starts, also earning career highs in tries scored (7) and tackles made, finishing in the top 10 league wide with 172. Damm was named as the RFCLA Captain for the 2025 season is continuing his impressive tackle rate, currently sat 2nd in MLR on 36 tackles in his two games. Congratulations on reaching 50 MLR appearances, Jason!

To Conclude

A handful of milestones for the San Diego Legion, an All-Time Top 10 points scorer continues to rack them up, and a pair of appearance milestones including an MLR first! That does it for your round-up of standout stats from Round 2 of the 2025 Major League Rugby season in this 2nd edition of Midweek Milestones.

If you like this series, please let me know on social media and share this article to bring attention to these achievements! If there’s anything that may have been missed that you feel is worth mentioning, you can reach out to NARDB via the ‘Contact’ tab on this site. Alternatively, you can reach out to NARDB or James via social media: @MLRStats on Instagram/Threads, @JamDelay & @NARugbyDB on Twitter/X, and @JamDelay and @NARDB on Bluesky!

If you’re looking to get your hands on some of the new Macron merch for 2025, Visit shopmlr.com to get your hands on that new gear, and remember to use code ‘MLRSTATS’ at checkout for 15% off your order!

MLR Player Movement Summary: Dec 30, 2024 – Jan 5, 2025

NARDatabase

James Deeley

Welcome to 2025! Every week these MLR Player Movement Summary articles outline each roster move around Major League Rugby, whether that is a returning player, a new signing, or a departure, so that MLR fans can easily stay up to date on all the off-season activity ahead of the 2025 season. This week’s article covers the week from December 30, 2024 to January 5, 2025 and so, as mentioned already, welcome to 2025!

With pre-season camps opening today (January 6th), it could be assumed that all MLR teams have pretty much finished announcing their 2025 rosters, but considering we still haven’t heard a peep out of Anthem RC, and the Seattle Seawolves haven’t announced a single returning player, it’s likely that player announcements will continue almost right up to opening kick-off on February 15th. Last week saw another relatively quiet week but as with the week before, there is still plenty to discuss. 10 re-signings across 4 teams made up the bulk of the announcements as usual, with an intra-league move and two big names returning to MLR from overseas. As always, we start with the summary graphic and then jump in to the re-signings:

MLR Player Movement Summary: December 30th, 2024 – January 5th, 2025 (Page 1 of 1)

Re-signings

Of the 10 re-signings last week, the NOLA Gold announced four returning back three players for their 2025 roster. Samoan try machine Ed Fidow is back for his second season with the Gold after scoring 5 tries in 7 games for the team in an injury-affected 2024. A 2022 MLR Champion with New York, Fidow has a very impressive 21 tries in his 35 career MLR games with over 3,000m gained with ball in hand. Alongside Fidow will be NOLA Gold veteran Harley Wheeler, who has 8 tries in his 38 games for the club since 2020 (29 starts) and over 150 tackles completed with a high of 84 in 2022. Academy graduate Jack Webster, who can also play centre, returns for a 4th season with the Gold having earned 16 appearances since 2022. Webster also played a game for the Dallas Jackals in 2022 while on short term loan to the Texas team. Last but by no means least for the Gold is impressive rookie Julian Roberts, returning for his sophomore season in New Orleans. Drafted 6th overall by the Gold in 2023 out of Life University, Roberts started 4 of his 11 appearances in 2024, scoring 2 tries and running for over 350m gained in possession.

Staying in the Eastern Conference and heading up to Illinois, the Chicago Hounds announced a returning trio of their own last week. Kansan scrum-half and capped USA Eagle Michael Baska is back for a 3rd year with the Hounds and 7th in MLR. Baska has 8 tries and 46pts in his 58 career games (30 starts), with 10 starts in 22 for Chicago since 2023. Also returning to the Hounds back line is South African fly-half/fullback Kian Meadon for a second year in Chicago after a pair of seasons with the Houston SaberCats. Meadon has 1 try and 37pts in his 11 MLR games since 2022 with a 61% success rate from the tee, but has struggled for game time over the last two seasons with only 2 games in 2023 and 1 in 2024. Although an international player, Meadon will be hoping for some consistent game time in 2025, but will be fighting with Tim Swiel, Adriaan Carelse, and Ben Pollack for games. In the pack, MLR veteran Paddy Ryan returns for his 8th season in the front row, and 3rd with Chicago. One of three players named ‘Paddy Ryan’ to have played in MLR, the Chicago-born Irishman has 8 tries in 71 games (53 starts) since 2018, with over 360 tackles completed and 1,107m gained as a prop.

Heading over to the Western Conference, a pair of depth pieces are returning to Zions Bank in 2025. Former Portland State defensive Lineman Tonga Kofe is back for a second season with the Utah Warriors in 2025. The 6’2, 310lb behemoth earned 6 appearances in 2024, and may be the heaviest player in MLR history. A monster in the front row. Returning to the Warriors’ backline for a third season is local product Sione Mahe, who earned 2 starts in 3 games in 2024 before suffering an ACL injury that sidelined him for much of the year. Heading to California but staying on the subject of injuries, Rugby FC LA announce the return of lock Jurie van Vuuren for a second season in LA, and 6th in MLR. Van Vuuren has scored 9 tries in 55 games (47 starts) since 2020, completing 584 tackles. He spent 4 seasons with the Utah Warriors before joining RFCLA in 2024 where he earned 4 appearances before suffering an injury that rule him out of the majority of the 2024 season.

‘New’ Faces

In this section we typically cover the new players entering MLR from leagues around the world. While that is still the case this week, it’s not strictly true to say that these faces are ‘new’. Both of last week’s signings from leagues outside MLR have already played in Major League Rugby at some point in their careers. Capped USA Eagle Mikey Sosene-Feagai signs with Rugby FC LA for the 2025 season, marking the first time the California-born hooker has played in MLR since 2021. Sosene-Feagai scored 2 tries in 15 games (all starts) for Old Glory DC between 2020-2021 before signing with Toulon in the French Top 14. He signed with Agen in the Pro D2 after a season with Toulon, where he played from 2022-2024.

Over in the Eastern Conference, the NOLA Gold have negotiated a season-loan for regular USA starting 9 Ruben de Haas for 2025. The South African moved with his family from the Western Cape to Arkansas when he was young, and has been a member of the Cheetahs system since 2017. He started 4 of his 6 appearances for the Austin Gilgronis in 2021 before heading to England and playing with Saracens in the Premiership between 2021-2023. De Haas returned to the Cheetahs following his time in the Premiership, playing in the Currie Cup and Challenge Cup. He will return to the Cheetahs once again following the 2025 MLR season.

Intra-League Moves

To wrap things up for this week’s summary article, the Chicago Hounds announced the signing of Californian hooker Jackson Zabierek for his sophomore season in 2025. Zabierek was drafted 18th overall by Rugby FC LA in 2023 out of the University of Santa Cruz, but did not sign with RFCLA. Instead, he joined the American Raptors for their 2024 Super Rugby Americas season. Once the Raptors season was over, Zabierek joined the Seattle Seawolves for their 2024 playoff push where he earned 6 appearances. He came off the bench in every playoff game for the Seawolves including the Championship Game against the New England Free Jacks, finishing as MLR runners-up.

In Conclusion

That wraps up this week’s summary article for player announcements around Major League Rugby from last week! We’ve almost made it through the long, dark MLR off-season and with kick-off on MLR 2025 just around the corner, it’s likely that the majority of player announcements are behind us. Anticipate teams making final adjustments to their rosters and possibly some promotions from academy sides, but there may still be a surprise or two in store for us. Another week gone, and still silence from Anthem RC. Pre-Season camps open on January 6th, so I hope they’ve got some idea who will be turning up.

Stay up to date on all player announcements as they happen by following NARDB and James on Social Media! @MLRStats on Instagram/Threads, @NARugbyDB and @JamDelay on Twitter/X, or @NARDB and @JamDelay on Bluesky!

MLR Player Movement Summary: December 16-22, 2024

NARDatabase

James Deeley

The last week before Christmas 2024 saw a huge number of roster moves from MLR teams as they all scramble to get their last-minute shopping done in time for the holidays. Each week, NARDB summarises every single roster move around the league so fans can easily stay up to date with all the goings on during the off-season. This week, we’ll add a little detail to all the roster moves from the week between December 9th & December 16th!

20 re-signings in total across five teams, including nine for the NOLA Gold alone should give some idea of how busy the week was. This doesn’t even include the nine new faces joining MLR from other leagues around the world, or the four 2024 Collegiate draftees that were officially signed, or the three intra-league moves that saw a pair of loanees return to their clubs for 2025! It’s a busy week, and as usual we’ll start with the Page 1 summary graphic, and dive right in to the re-signings:

MLR Player Moves Summary: December 9-16, 2024 (1 of 3) – Please note that Tomy Malanos signed with the Miami Sharks, not Rugby FC LA as noted above.

Re-Signings

As mentioned, last week saw 20 re-signings in total including nine for the NOLA Gold alone, who announced their returning props and halfbacks for the 2025 season. Starting in the front row, Gold academy product Bart Vermeulen returns for a 2nd season after earning 5 appearances from the bench, and ex-Arrow Isaac Salmon (36a, 25s) also returns for a 2nd season in New Orleans alongside fellow New Zealander Jarred Adams, who returns for a 3rd season with the Gold and has over 800m gained in his 29 games (21 starts) to date. Having been with NOLA for slightly longer, Matt Harmon (73a, 45s) and James ‘Doc’ Irey (24a, 3s) each return for their 7th seasons with the team.

As well as announcing the return of five props, the NOLA Gold announced a pair each of returning scrumhalves and flyhalves, with Namibian international scrumhalf Damien Stevens the most experienced of the four, with 6 tries and 98pts in his 47 games (26 starts) for the Gold to date across 4 seasons. Alongside Stevens will be Luke Campbell returning for his 3rd season with the Gold. Campbell has 5 tries and 29pts in hs 27 games (24 starts) since 2023, and well over 125 tackles completed (high for a 9). Moving to the 10 jersey, academy product Reece Botha returns for his 3rd season with the team after a stand-out 2024 in which he scored 2 tries and 53pts, appearing in all 17 Gold games and starting 6. Fighting with Botha for starts will be welshman Dorian Jones who’s back for a 2nd MLR season in NOLA. Jones had limited game time in 2024 but still scored 1 try and 38pts in his 5 games (all starts).

Moving to the other team with mass re-signings but staying in the Eastern Conference, Old Glory DC continue their ’24 days of re-signings’ with another six returning faces. US-eligible English prop Joe Wrafter is back for a second season in the nation’s capital after earning 2 appearances off the bench in 2024, and joining him in the front row is test capped Uruguayan hooker Facundo Gattas, who has 5 tries in 25 games (9 starts) since 2022 and is back for his 4th MLR season in 2025. Moving to the DC second row, Gattas’ Los Teros teammate Ignacio Dotti is back for a 6th MLR season and 2nd with the Flags. Dotti has over 1,000m gained and 331 tackles in his 46 MLR games (35 starts) since 2019. Joining him in the engine room is capped Scotland international Rob Harley, who can also play flanker and earned 15 appearances (14 starts) for DC in 2024 and finished 5th MLR-wide in tackles completed, with a huge 189. Finally for Old Glory, a pair of speedsters are back for 2025. Sticking with the South American theme, Argentine winger Axel Müller returns after scoring 5 tries in 11 games in 2024, while also completing over 70 tackles. Also returning on the wing is another test capped Scot, Damian Hoyland, following 12 appearances and over 1000m gained in his debut season in North America.

Things were a little quieter in the Western Conference in terms of re-signings. The Houston SaberCats announced the return of stalwart Emmanuel Albert and academy graduate Aiden Kerr. A 2nd overall pick in 2021 out of Lindenwood, Albert scored 2 tries in 2024 earned 6 of his 9 career starts, and completed a career high 121 tackles. At the early stages of his development, Washington native Aiden Kerr will look to earn his MLR debut in 2025. Heading to the coast, Rugby FC LA announced a single returnee last week, but it was a good one. Test capped Canadian back row Matt Heaton returns for a second season in LA and 6th in MLR. Heaton passed his 50th league cap in 2024, scoring his 7th try and recording a hefty 166 tackles. This takes his career tackle total over 800, just the 6th player in league history to pass that milestone. Moving back inland to the Beehive State, the Utah Warriors have begun announcing their returnees, with another tackle machine, Dylan Nel. Nel recorded 128 tackles of his own in only 11 games (all starts), also racking up over 750m gained for the Warriors. Ex-Arrow Tyler Wong is also returning for Utah after earning 3 appearances off the bench for his new club, having been selected by them in the Toronto & NY Dispersal Draft in 2023.

MLR Player Moves Summary: December 9-16, 2024 (2 of 3)

New to MLR

As mentioned just above, Rugby FC LA had just the one re-signing announced last week, but boy were they busy. The fresh-look RFCLA announced five of last week’s nine new faces, including a trio from the Randwick Galloping Green to add to the two they had already announced. Maybe the ‘R’ in ‘RFCLA‘ actually stands for Randwick? 2023 Shute Shield winning Captain Ben Houston joins Nick Chan and Matias Jensen, as do fellow 2023 Champions Declan Leaney and Cronan Gleeson. Irish prop Gleeson is no stranger to MLR, having played with Rugby ATL in 2020 and the San Diego Legion the following year, earning 17 appearances total (6 starts) and 99 tackles. Another ex-pat heads to California via Australia, Ed Timpson. English back row Timpson played alongside new RFCLA teammate Ben Sugars at the University of Nottingham in the UK, and was playing with the Northern Suburbs in the Shute Shield, a favoured hunting ground for RFCLA Head Coach and Director of Rugby, Stephen Hoiles. Lastly for LA, but most definitely not least, dual-test capped fly-half Christian Leali’ifano joins for 2025 from the Moana Pasifika in Super Rugby. The Brumbies Centurion and 7th player in Super Rugby history to pass 1,000pts has test caps with both the Wallabies and Samoa, and is test debut was against the British & Irish Lions. Leali’ifano represented Australia at the RWC in Japan in 2019, and Samoa at the RWC in France in 2023.

Sticking in the Western Conference, the Houston SaberCats were also picking around Australia. The Texas team signing Scottish prop Michael Scott from the Northern Suburbs in the Shute Shield. Another addition for the ‘Cats is Jacob Merklinger, a So-Cal native prop who came up through the San Diego Legion system, and represented the San Clemente Rhinos in the World Rugby Tens before making the final jump from the SaberCats academy to the MLR side. Jumping back across the Pacific, Kiwi utility back Vilimone Koroi is headed over to the Eastern Conference and the Big Easy, signing with the NOLA Gold from the Highlanders in Super Rugby. Koroi is a capped All Blacks Sevens man, winning a Commonwealth Gold in 2018. To wrap up the new faces we’re staying in the East but in Chicago, who signed fellow Australasian Liam Fletcher from back-to-back Hospital Cup winners Brothers Rugby Club.

New Draftees Confirmed

While not completely new names in Major League Rugby, a flurry of 2024 Draftee signings hit us last week, as the Houston SaberCats confirmed their 2nd Rd Pick, signing utility back Jake Negrete, one of six draftees out of St. Mary’s College in the 2024 Draft Class. Negrete was selected 20th overall in 2024 and will be hoping to make a similar impact to 2023 rookie Max Schumacher. The remaining three draftee signings happened over in the Eastern Conference, starting with the Miami Sharks signing their 27th overall pick Lautaro Soto Ansay. Born in the US but raised in Argentina, Soto attended the rugby powerhouse Lindenwood University, from where he was drafted. Heading up to the home of the Champions in Massachusetts, the New England Free Jacks signed both of their 2024 draftees last week, penning deals with Kaipono Kayoshi and Matt Carrion. Kayoshi, a USA U18 & U20 back rower already, was selected 4th overall and is another of those six St. Mary’s College Gaels that were drafted in 2024. Matt Carrion is another US age-grade representative, having payed with the U18s before attending Life University, where the Running Eagle back row was selected 14th overall. Adding a pair of rookies to an already very crowded Free Jacks back row doesn’t bode well for their playing time in 2025, but fingers crossed both Kayoshi and Carrion can string together some minutes.

MLR Player Moves Summary: December 9-16, 2024 (3 of 3)

Intra-League Moves and Retirements

Although we still haven’t heard anything from Anthem RC in terms of who is playing for them when the season starts in under 50 days, other team announcements are giving us an idea of who isn’t returning for their sophomore season. The New England Free Jacks announced the return of Central Washington Alum Ivan Pula, another draftee who was selected 37th overall in the 2022 Collegiate Draft by the Free Jacks. the Washington prop earned 7 MLR appearances for Anthem while on loan there for the 2024 season. Pula wasn’t the only loanee returning to their team from Carolina, though. Canadian born US- eligible forward Logan Weidner was confirmed as returning to Old Glory DC. The 6’6 USA U20 player earned 2 starts in 12 appearances for Anthem RC on loan, completing a solid 81 tackles in the process. Staying in the Eastern Conference, the Miami Sharks signed Argentinian centre Tomy Malanos after two seasons with the Dallas Jackals. Malanos scored 9 tries in 29 games for Dallas, recording over 1,250m gained and just shy of 200 tackles completed (198).

Not listed on the summary graphics from last week is a lone retirement. Austin White announced the end of his professional playing career after 4 seasons in Major League Rugby. A 2021 Runner-Up, White represented Rugby ATL from 2020-2023 before following the franchise to LA, playing with Rugby FC LA for their debut season in 2024. White scored 8 tries in his 43 games (30 starts), recording over 1,800m gained and 127 tackles in his MLR career. Best of luck in your next chapter, Austin!

In Conclusion

This Player Move summary is a few days late due to the holidays. They are typically published every Monday so if you are reading this article on it’s release date (December 28th, 2024), you’ll only have to wait a couple more days for the next summary. A busy week from December 16-22 makes way for a much quieter week for the holidays, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been moves. The purpose of this article is to keep MLR fans up to date during the off-season and now that we are under 50 days away from kick off on the 2025 season, teams are hurriedly preparing for training camps, that are only a couple of weeks away.

As always, it’s recommended to follow NARDB and James on social media to stay up to date on moves as they happen. Follow @MLRStats on Instagram and Threads, @NARugbyDB or @JamDelay on Twitter/X, and @NARDB & @JamDelay on Bluesky.