Tag: San Diego Legion

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 11 of MLR2025!

NARDatabase

James Deeley

Round 11 of the 2025 season saw a bumper seven games during Major League Rugby’s first ever ‘Storm Week, including games on both Tuesday and Wednesday nights, and a number of teams playing two games in 1 round! With so many games, it’s hardly surprising that we saw some standout stats across the league for both teams and players, as well as some incredible appearance achievements!

Welcome back to Midweek Milestones, the weekly article that keeps fans informed of all the standout stats from the latest round 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 by the league itself. 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 with last week, we begin with the appearance achievements

Appearance Achievements – Utah’s First Centurion!

On Saturday, Utah Warriors prop Angus MacLellan was in the starting XV for his 100th MLR game, becoming just the 3rd player in league history to feature in 100 matches! The Michigan native is the 2nd player to reach 100 games played with a single team after JP Smith for the Seattle Seawolves just last week. Although all 3 MLR Centurions (Dylan Fawsitt, JP Smith, and now Angus MacLellan) having represented the United States at test level as USA Eagles, MacLellan is the first US-born player to enter MLR’s ‘100 club’!

Angus MacLellan becomes the first US-Born player to reach 100 MLR Appearances

Major League Rugby

SeasonTeamGPGSTCPACDGMGTacklesKS/KAPts
MLR 2018Warriors99100003156105
MLR 2019Warriors16162000024396010
MLR 2020Warriors55000001083200
MLR 2021Warriors1713000003329200
MLR 2022Warriors155000002057600
MLR 2023Warriors164000002117200
MLR 2024Warriors146000001347500
MLR 2025Warriors11100000236200
Total-10359300001571566015

The Traverse City, MI man has spent his entire MLR career with the Utah Warriors, earning his debut in the league’s inaugural season in 2018 where he started all 9 games for the Warriors, including their lone playoff appearance that year. MacLellan started all of his 30 games for Utah between 2018-2020 and has racked up 59 starts in 100 games in his MLR career to date. Congratulations, Angus! His full career stats in MLR can be seen above.

MacLellan’s impressive accomplishment was not the only appearance milestone during a bumper Rd 11 of MLR action. Another member of the front row earned his 50th MLR appearance in a convincing victory over Anthem RC on Sunday, Miami Sharks prop Alec McDonnell! The Missouri native and Lindenwood alum made his MLR debut with New York back in 2020, but really broke into the league with the SaberCats in 2022, starting 8 of his 9 games for Houston that year. He followed this with 16 appearances and a career high 56 tackles in 2023 before moving from Houston to Miami and signing with the Sharks. McDonnell has earned 24 appearances with the Sharks since, and set a career high 101m gained in their inaugural season in 2024. To date, McDonnell has started 18 of his 50 appearances in the league, and passed 200 career tackles on his 50th cap, congratulations, Alec!

Source: @Miasharksrugby via Instagram

From a 100th appearance to a 50th, and now from a 50th appearance to a bunch of debutants. MLR’s first ever ‘Storm Week’ saw some teams play 2 games within 4 days of each other and as such, squad rotation came into play. Some fringe players that might not have had the chance came in to bolster lineups and as a result, FIVE players earned their MLR debuts in Round 11, with three of them for Anthem RC! Starting in their first game of Round 11, when a trio of front rowers earned their first MLR appearances. Recently acquired on loan from the Chicago Hounds, Indiana native Alexander Hernandez appeared in both of Anthem’s Round 11 matches, coming off the bench in both games! Hernandez was drafted 34th overall in 2024 by the Chicago Hounds out of Marian University, and impressed with the Hounds academy during their fall season, earning an MLR contract. He was loaned to Anthem where he had a better opportunity at earning game time, and that was proved correct. Congratulations, Alexander!

Born in the US but raised in Canada, Neil Trainor was selected 2nd overall in the 2024 MLR Draft by Anthem RC out of Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. The Pacific Pride hooker earned just under 30 minutes of game time for Anthem in a tough 19-60 midweek affair last Wednesday, completing 4 tackles. In that same game, Californian prop Quinton Tindel also earned his MLR debut, coming on for the final 8 minutes and completing 2 tackles. Tindel, an alum of Cal Poly – San Luis Obispo and two-time Collegiate All-American, signed with Anthem RC as a free agent on a Homegrown Player Contract, and has now earned his Pro debut. Congratulations, both Neil and Quinton!

Moving away from Anthem RC and to one of their opponents from Round 11, the Miami Sharks. We have already discussed Alec McDonnell’s 50th MLR appearance, but packing down just behind him in the Sharks second row for the final few minutes of the match was Calvin Ihrig. The Chicago-born Lindenwood University alum discovered rugby which at school in Thailand, and was selected 3rd overall by the Sharks in the 2024 draft, now earning his debut off the bench in a comfortable 31-5 home victory. Congratulations, Calvin! Finally for the MLR debutants from Round 11, we head to the nation’s capital where Irish utility back Declan O’Loughlin made his Pro Debut for Old Glory DC in the final 10 minutes after earning his first pro contract during the DC academy season in the fall. A native of County Galway in Ireland, O’Loughlin made 7m and won a turnover as the Flags fell to the SaberCats in the Houston heat. Congratulations, Declan!

Victory Milestones

As mentioned just above, on Saturday the Houston SaberCats were able to hold of Old Glory DC for a comfortable victory at home, securing their second win in a row and staying atop the ferocious Western Conference. The SaberCats’ 48-27 victory over the Flags marks their 50th victory in MLR dating back to the league’s inaugural season in 2018, and claimed their 50th Try Bonus Point to boot! They hold an all-time regular season record of 50-0-53, and are 0-3 in the postseason. This makes them only the 4th team in MLR history to reach a half-century of victories in the competition. Congrats, ‘Cats!

The Houston SaberCats were not the only team to reach this marker during Round 11, however. The following day, the NOLA Gold recorded a big win over the Seattle Seawolves to claim their 50th MLR win, becoming the 5th team to reach the half-century of victories! The Gold have an all-time regular season record of 50-1-52 and are 0-1 in the postseason. In MLR’s All-Time Regular Season Standings, the Gold (274pts) sit just 9pts ahead of the SaberCats (265pts), both with 103 regular season games played.

Individual Scoring Milestones

Moving from team milestones to player achievements, starting with Tomas Aoake in San Diego. The Legion managed to snap their 4 game losing streak and retain the Cali Cup thanks in part to an Aoake score against Rugby FC LA over the weekend. This the 23rd try of Aoake’s MLR career, with all 23 having been scored for the Legion. The New Zealander’s 23rd tally and 5th of the 2025 season takes him ahead of team legend Nate Augspurger to become the San Diego Legion’s All-Time Top Try Scorer!

Although he had 4 tries in his debut MLR season in 2022, Aoake exploded in the Legion’s record-setting 2023 season, dotting down 11 times and running for 1,160m gained as San Diego finished as runners-up. These are still both career highs for Aoake. With 5 tries this year already to take him to T-12th all-time, how high can he get in 2025? Congratulations, Tomas!

Tomas Aoake becomes San Diego’s All-Time leading Try Scorer!

Moving from California over to the East Coast, the Miami Sharks’ dominant 31-5 victory over Anthem RC secured their 3rd victory in a row, setting a longest-ever win streak for the franchise! This victory was helped by the return of their talismanic Chilean international, Santiago Videla. As well as racking up just under 100m in meters made, Videla slotted 3 conversions and a penalty from the tee for 9pts in the game, taking his MLR total to 106. Scoring 100pts in Major League Rugby is an achievements in and of itself but with 106pts scored for the Sharks, Videla is the first player to pass 100pts scored for Miami! Congratulations, Santiago!

Heading to Texas, where the SaberCats recorded a runaway 48-27 victory over Old Glory DC, thanks in large part to a stellar performance from AJ Alatimu. The Samoan MLR veteran slotted 5 kicks from the tee (2pens, 3 cons) and added a try for 17pts in total from the man who sits 2nd All-Time in league scoring. This is the first time this season that a player has recorded over 15pts scored in a single game, setting a new 2025 record and surpassing the SEVEN players who have all scored 15pts in a game! With 6 weeks of action left in this regular season, will Alatimu’s season-high be beaten?

Alatimu sets new 2025 record with 17pt game for Houston

Miscellaneous Milestones!

Ending with a couple of tidbits from around the league that are worth mentioning and applauding, beginning with the Seattle Seawolves, who came close to a MLR record in their huge 19-60 road victory over Anthem RC in their first game of Round 11. The Seawolves ran riot in the Queen City, scoring 9 tries from 9 different players to equal the Toronto Arrows’ 9 different try scorers from a 31-64 victory over the Utah Warriors way back in 2019. This is T-2nd to only the Dallas Jackals, who scored 10 tries from 10 different scorers with a huge 28-68 road victory last season.

Now to a bit of history from the Chicago Hounds, who fielded their first pair of brothers in their clash with the Utah Warriors on Saturday. Mason Flesch started at lock while his younger brother Noah Flesch was at center for the match at Zion’s Bank Stadium and although they aren’t the first pair of brothers to start a MLR game together (The Suniula brothers come to mind for Seattle in the early years of the league, as well as the Kruse brothers for the Utah Warriors), they are the first pair of Canadian siblings to suit up together in a MLR starting 15. Congratulations to the Flesch brothers from Cobourg, Ontario!

Source: @chicagohoundsrugby via instagram

Wrapping Up

A bumper, 7-game Round 11 brought a bumper edition of Midweek Milestones this week, with all manner of appearance achievements, a new Legion try leader, 50th victories, and much more! With another midweek game to kick off Round 12, as well as a weekend full of MLR action, can we expect the same? You’ll have to check back in 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 10 of MLR2025!

NARDatabase

James Deeley

It’s hard to believe that we’re already 10 rounds in to the 2025 Major League Rugby season, and no closer to knowing where this season is going. Both conferences are still incredibly tight, with early season juggernauts reeling, and shaky starts evening out and starting to compete for the top spots! Let’s explore some of the standout stats from Round 10 of the 2025 MLR season.

Welcome back to Midweek Milestones! This weekly article highlights the big, and sometimes the small milestones that teams and players reached during the latest round of Major league Rugby action. The purpose of this is to highlight achievements that deserve recognition, that may have gone unnoticed otherwise. This week begins with the now-regular segment for Appearance Achievements, because there was a big one!

Appearance Achievements – MLR’s Second Centurion!

On Friday April 18th, the Seattle Seawolves defeated the Chicago Hounds in front of a home crowd. Seawolves scrum-half JP Smith started his 90th MLR game for the team, appearing in the 100th MLR game of his career to become just the 2nd player to feature in 100 matches in the competition. JP Smith is MLR’s Second Centurion!

JP Smith becomes MLR’s 2nd Centurion, and the first player to reach 100 appearances with a single team.

The South African joins fellow capped USA Eagle Dylan Fawsitt in MLR’s 100 Club, with Fawsitt having earned the achievement earlier this season with the Chicago Hounds (Seattle and Smith’s opponent for his 100th game, but Fawsitt did not feature). Although JP Smith is the second player to 100 MLR appearances, he is the first player in MLR history to play in 100 games for a single team, having played all 100 matches with the Seattle Seawolves since his debut in 2019. Smith is a 2019 MLR Champion and has finished as a Runner-Up twice, in 2022 & 2024. He was and All-MLR First XV selection in 2022, and has been included on the All-MLR Honorable Mention XV twice (2023, 2024). Congratulations, JP!
Smith’s stats can be found below:

JP Smith – MLR Stats

Major League Rugby

SeasonTeamGPGSTCPACDGMGTacklesKS/KAPts
MLR 2019Seawolves181160000264117030
MLR 2020Seawolves55200009943010
MLR 2021Seawolves1414100102388907
MLR 2022Seawolves1919432103621525/634
MLR 2023Seawolves171740010364131022
MLR 2024Seawolves191630000255110015
MLR 2025Seawolves11112000010663010
Total-1039322323016887055/6128

Although JP Smith’s achievement is probably the biggest highlight from Round 10, it’s not the only appearance milestone around the league. On the opposing side of Smith’s Seawolves were the Chicago Hounds and MLR Draftee Jake Kinneeveauk on the bench. The big Alaskan was selected in the 2nd Round, 22nd overall in the 2024 MLR Draft out of the University of Utah, and came on for the final 7 minutes to earn his MLR debut, completing two tackles as the Hounds comeback fell just short. Congratulations, Jake!

Speaking of Draftees, Major League Rugby’s first ever draft pick made his 50th MLR appearance on Friday as Conner Mooneyham and Anthem RC faced the New England Free Jacks. Mooneyham was selected 1st overall by the Dallas Jackals in MLR’s first draft back in 2020 and represented the Austin Gilgronis from 2021-2022, scoring 8 tries in 23 games before signing with the Seattle Seawolves. The Life University alum played with the Seawolves from 2023-2024, finishing as an MLR runner-up in 2024. A capped USA Eagle, Mooneyham was then traded (at his request) to Anthem RC for the 2025 season, where he earned his 50th MLR appearance in Round 10! He is the 3rd MLR Draftee to reach 50 appearances after Emmanuel Albert and Tavite Lopeti. Congratulations, Conner!

Lining up opposite Mooneyham in Friday night’s clash was New England Free Jacks center and Namibian international Le Roux Malan. Born in Namibia and raised in South Africa, Malan also earned his 50th MLR appearance in Round 10, playing all 50 games with the Free Jacks and starting 46 times since his debut in 2022. Malan has scored in the past two MLR Championship games, bagging the Shield-Winning score for New England in 2023. He suffered a nasty injury in between while representing his country at the Rugby World Cup in 2023, but came back in time for a try in the 2024 Final as well. Malan has 16 tries in his MLR career to date and over 3,100 meters made. Congratulations, Le Roux!

Source: @NEFreeJacks via Instagram

The final new member of the half-century club is San Diego Legion’s Tiaan Loots! The South African back started his MLR journey with the Houston SaberCats in 2020, playing 5 games before that season was cancelled due to COVID. He returned in 2021, signing with the San Diego Legion and representing them from 2021 onwards. He has started 40 of his 50 games in the competition, scoring 14 tries including a career high 6 last season! A MLR runner-up with the Legion in 2023, Loots has over 3,300m made in his career to date and was named in the All-MLR 2nd XV for the 2024 season. Congratulations on reaching 50 MLR appearances, Tiaan!

Team Milestones

Over the last few weeks, two of the 2024 expansion sides have passed the 500pt mark in Rugby FC LA and the Miami Sharks. After Round 10, the final team has also crept over this milestone! Although Anthem RC are still hunting for their elusive first win as a club, their point scoring isn’t too far off that of the Sharks or RFCLA. Thanks to 6 points from the boot of USA Eagle Mitch Wilson, the Rising Stars now sit on 502pts scored as a franchise. They were on the brink of that first victory earlier in the season but seem to have dropped off a bit. Can they get over the hump with 7 games remaining this season?

Before Anthem RC, the Miami Sharks were the latest team to hit the 500pt mark. The Sharks have garnered a bit of a reputation of nail-biting finishes this season, and that reputation won’t be helped by their 35-37 victory over Old Glory DC! In what was almost a repeat of their Round 1 clash, the Sharks raced out to a healthy 7-31 lead before DC battled back, and it was only two second half penalties from Shane O’Leary that spared the Sharks’ blushes in this one. At a combined 72pts scored, this is the highest scoring game in Miami Sharks history, eclipsing the 71pt total from a 50-21 victory over Anthem RC in Round 4 of the 2024 season. Congratulations, Sharks!

DC’s Run of Alternating Results Comes to an End!

On May 11th 2024, Old Glory DC recorded a 21-22 road victory over the Chicago Hounds to move to 2 wins in a row. Since then, the Flags had alternated between wins and losses for 16 games, before the Miami Sharks handed them a 35-37 defeat and 2nd loss in a row in Round 10 of the 2025 season!

Old Glory DC’s run of 16 alternating games ends

This streak (if you want to call it a streak) lasted for 16 games and went through the end of the 2024 regular season, continued through the 2024 playoffs, and made it half way through the 2025 regular season. Old Glory DC had not been on a streak of any kind in almost a calendar year!

Wrapping Up

A second MLR Centurion, a MLR debut, and Old Glory DC‘s strange streak comes to an end, all in this week’s edition of Midweek Milestones! With midweek games starting in Round 11 and running for the next few weeks, there’s bound to be some more standout stats. These articles will still be posted weekly and cover the latest round of MLR action, so next week’s article will cover the SEVEN matches from Round 11 of the 2025 Major League Rugby season!

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 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 3 of MLR2025!

NARDatabase

James Deeley

The 2025 Major League Rugby Season is flying, and we’re already three rounds into the new season with plenty to discuss! This article will highlight milestones and achievements from Round 3 that may have otherwise gone unnoticed, while also covering some of the larger milestones from the latest round of MLR action.

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.

7th Time’s the Charm!

The Utah Warriors continued their early season form with a convincing 55-21 victory over the NOLA Gold in a cross-conference clash to celebrate their 2025 home opener at Zion’s Bank Stadium on Saturday, marking the Warriors’ first ever victory over the Gold on the 7th attempt!

Entering this game with a 0-6 record against NOLA and a -49 Points Difference, the game remained close until around the 50 minute mark when the Warriors stepped on the gas, scoring 5 second half tries and 8 in total to blow the visitors away. Their 55pts from this game, added to the 45pts scored by Utah in their first game in Round 2, put them on 100pts scored in 2025 in just two games. This equals a MLR record for the fastest team to reach 100pts scored in a season, first achieved by the Austin Gilgronis in 2022 (43-7 & 57-12, also 100pts in their first two games)!

To put the icing on the cake, three of the Utah Warriors’ tries were scored by Joe Mano, earning his 2nd career MLR hat trick to become just the 4th player in League history to score multiple hat tricks in the competition, and the first Utah Warrior! This takes Mano’s career try total to 30, becoming just the 7th player in history to reach 30 tries scored in Major League Rugby! Congratulations, Joe!

Miami Reach 50 Meat Pies!

The Miami Sharks secured back to back wins (just!) to put them atop the Eastern Conference following a bruising game against Anthem RC on Friday night, with the USA’s Rising Stars coming closer than ever to their first win. Despite efforts to make it interesting at the end in classic Sharks fashion, Miami edged a 31-32 victory on the road, picking up 4 tries and a bonus point for their considerable efforts.

Of these four Miami tries, the third was scored by Ben Bonasso which on it’s own is simply a try in a close game. However, this try marked the 50th in Franchise history for the Sharks! They proceeded to add a 51st try from Tomas Bekerman to secure the Try Bonus Point late in the game, but the milestone try belongs to Ben Bonasso and the Sharks franchise, congratulations!

‘The Mechanic’ Hits a Half-Century

A strong runner and a formidable tackler, Joe ‘The Mechanic’ Johnston is playing in his 4th Major League Rugby Campaign in 2025 and, on Sunday reached 50 games played in the competition! Johnston has represented the New England Free Jacks for his entire MLR career, joining ahead of the 2021 season and playing with New England through their first Championship victory in 2023. He returned to his native New Zealand for 2024 in order to finish his studies but returned to Quincy this season, much to the delight of fans.

In each of his MLR seasons so far (not including 2025), Johnston has made over 500m in possession and completed well over 150 tackles, finishing in the Top 10 MLR tacklers twice (2021 & 2022), and achieving personal bests in both categories in 2022 (592m and 220 tackles). As of this article he has 1,739m made and 622 tackles completed (#24 all time). Johnston has started 39 of his 50 appearances in MLR (78%) and scored 8 MLR tries to date, and has been serving as the New England Captain for their 2025 season, where he was named as the Free Jacks’ Player of the Match on his 50th appearance. Congratulations, Joe!

Source: @NEFreeJacks via Instagram

The Legion pass 3,000!

The San Diego Legion continued their impressive start to the season with a bonus point victory on the road against Old Glory DC, with the 10-26 storyline perhaps flattering the visitors, as a frigid Maryland Saturday made for a low scoring, stop-start game. The San Diego Legion only managed 243m gained in total (compared to Old Glory’s 396m), setting a new MLR record for the lowest meters gained total in a winning effort, surpassing the previous record of 274m set by the Houston SaberCats in Round 4 of 2021!

Christian Poidevin’s 2nd try of the 2025 season secured the try bonus point for the Legion in the final few minutes, marking his 12th career MLR try. This try also pushed the San Diego Legion over the 3,000pts scored milestone as a franchise, becoming just the 2nd MLR team to pass the 3k mark after the Seattle Seawolves back in Round 1 (read more on that here)! The Legion now sit on 3,004 points scored, just behind their rivals the Seawolves, on 3,037.

Struggles in Seattle

On the topic of the Seattle Seawolves, their uncharacteristic start to the 2025 season looks to have gone from bad to worse following a narrow 21-24 defeat to the Houston SaberCats, falling to 0-2 on the season. As mentioned in a previous NARDB Article analyzing the increase in cards in recent MLR seasons, the Seattle Seawolves had never received a red card coming into the 2025 season. Unfortunately, that changed in dramatic fashion on Saturday evening.

In the 71st minute, while still holding a 17-21 lead, Pago Haini was showed a straight red card, becoming the first Seawolves player to ever receive a red card. An unenviable record that I’m sure Haini would rather forget. Houston would score to take the lead shortly after, before Juice Gumede was also shown a second straight red card in the 76th minute to reduce Seattle to 13 men for the final few minutes! The Seawolves had gone over 100 MLR games without seeing a red card, and suddenly two come along at once! Seattle will likely be without Haini or Gumede for the next few weeks, depending on their suspensions.

Sadly for Seawolves fans, that wasn’t quite all the bad news. They only managed 213m made in this game compared to Houston’s 387m made. This is the 2nd lowest carrying meters total in MLR history, only just ahead of the 202m made (also by the Seattle Seawolves) in Round 13 of the 2022 season against the Austin Gilgronis.

Source: @SeawolvesRugby via Twitter/X

It wasn’t quite entirely doom and gloom for the Seattle Seawolves, however. If any fans are looking for something to celebrate from this game, they did take a losing bonus point from this game and prevent the Houston SaberCats (their Western Conference rivals) from taking a try bonus point from this game.
On top of this, Seawolves’ South African hooker Kerron van Vuuren made his MLR debut for Seattle, becoming the 150th player to represent the team in an MLR game. van Vuuren scored a try on debut to cap off a milestone game for both him and the team, even if the result didn’t go the way they hoped.

In Conclusion

A first for the Utah Warriors, the San Diego Legion reach 3k, the Miami Sharks pass 50 tries scored, and more! That’s all for the 3rd edition of Midweek Milestones from Round 3 of Major League Rugby’s 2025 season.

If you like this series, please let me know on social media and share this article to help highlight 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!

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: January 20-26, 2025

NARDatabase

James Deeley

Welcome back to NARDB’s weekly Major League Rugby Off-Season Player Movement Summary Series. On a weekly basis, this series dives deeper into every single roster move announced by teams during the MLR Off-Season. This particular article covers the moves from January 20th to 26th, 2025.

Pre-Season camps are in full swing for all 11 MLR teams, with under 3 weeks to go until the 2025 season kicks off on February 15th. This didn’t stop one team from dominating last week’s summary. It seems hard to believe that the team hadn’t finalised these deals months ago, but maybe they forgot the announcements, and only remembered when these players reported. As always, this article will start with the summary graphic, before diving into the re-signings:

Summary of Player Movement Around MLR: January 20-26, 2025 (1 of 1)

Re-Signings

Last week’s busiest team was easily the Utah Warriors. Warriors fans seem to have largely recovered from the early off-season announcement of 17 departing players, and are looking forward to see the team take a step forward in 2025. The return of the team’s all-time top scorer and former captain, Joel Hodgson, will make taking that step forward significantly easier. The English ex-Newcastle Falcons Fly-half has appeared in all 32 games the Warriors have played since 2023, starting all but 1 of them. He finished 3rd in MLR scoring last season with 111pts in 16 games (15 starts) and a 65% success rate from the tee. After only 2 seasons in MLR, Hodgson already sits 12th all-time in terms of scoring with 233pts, and will no doubt be looking to break into the Top 10 in 2025.

Trade Targets

Along with announcing the return of their franchise points scorer, the Utah Warriors started the week with a Western Conference Trade with the San Diego Legion. The Legion acquired wing/center Alesana Pohla from the Utah Warriors in exchange for 2025 Cap Space. Unfortunately, as with all MLR trades the exact amount of Cap Space that the Utah Warriors received in this deal isn’t publically known, nor is the Salary Cap itself. Maybe one day. Alesana Pohla made his MLR debut for the Warriors in 2024, and started two of his 6 MLR games that season, amassing just shy of 200m gained in possession. He does not qualify as a domestic player just yet, so this may limit his game time with the Legion, but he certainly proved an effective runner with the Warriors last season.

Source: MLR Trade Wire

New Faces

The Utah Warriors were going for the full set last week. In addition to a re-signing and a trade, they also announced the addition of a pair of new players, one of which is a familiar name to MLR fans, and one will be enjoying his debut MLR season in 2025. The familiar name, especially for Dallas Jackals fans, is Ronnie McElligott. The Californian back row was drafted 32nd overall out of St. Mary’s College in 2023 by the Dallas Jackals, and earned 7 MLR appearances off the bench during his debut MLR season. McElligott was not selected in the Dallas Jackals Dispersal Draft shortly after their withdrawal from MLR, but the Warriors sign the former SMC Gael for his sophomore season in the league. The new face who will enjoy his debut MLR season in 2025 is Amulone ‘Lone’ Ika. Born in Utah so will count as a domestic player, Ika was raised in Tonga where he represented the Tonga U20s in 2014. He has had two stints in the Australian Shute Shield with the Western Sydney Two Blues, and in between, was coaching and playing in Utah. Ika is currently serving as assistant coach for the Utah Valley University rugby side.

There was another new face confirmed to be joining MLR for 2025, but this one is not without it’s share of controversy. The Houston SaberCats announced the signing of capped Scotland winger Rufus McLean for their 2025 campaign. The 24yo winger has earned 3 caps for Scotland, and scored a pair of tries on his test debut against Tonga in October 2021 after coming up through the Glasgow Warriors system. McLean’s contract with the Glasgow Warriors was terminated in 2023 however, and here is where the controversy comes in. That same year, McLean admitted, and was convicted of, domestic abuse against his girlfriend, for which he was issued a 10-year non-harassment order and sentenced to 120 hours of community service. Since then, Scotland, the Glasgow Warriors, and all other European clubs have steered clear of the once-promising winger. Usually this would (and should) kill a career, but McLean has the benefit of having been born in Boston, keeping the door open to play in the United States. The American Raptors announced the signing of McLean for their 2024 Super Rugby Americas season, in a move that was met with a poor reception. Since the Raptors are not playing professional rugby in 2025, McLean turned his attention to MLR, where the Houston SaberCats have picked him up. Concerningly for ‘Cats fans, they have a history of signing controversial figures. Former LSU football player Drake Davis represented them in 2024, and Jeremy Misailegalu has played for them for the past two seasons (although Missile’s controversy is a different situation that merits a second chance). It is the view of NARDB that a player with a recent history like Rufus McLean should not be given the opportunity to play professional sports considering what we know, but everyone deserves a second chance. The question that MLR fans should be asking the SaberCats (and for that matter, the Raptors before them), is: What has McLean done to prove that he is worthy of a second chance, other than being born in the USA?

Departures

Among the Utah Warriors’ busy week was a departure that likely went under the radar for many MLR fans, perhaps even among a large chunk of Old Glory DC fans, who may not even know the player in question, despite playing with the team in 2024. Kevin Brou is a US-eligble front row from the Ivory Coast who was signed by the Flags for their 2024 Campaign, but suffered a broken leg in the pre-season and was sidelined for the entire year. FCY, in the French 6th tier the Fédérale 2, announced the signing of Brou for their 2024/25 season way back in September, but thanks to Bryan Ray on Twitter, MLR audiences are learning about this move now. Marking an end to Brou’s unfortunate stint in MLR, at least for now.

Anthem RC Finally Break the Silence

After what feels like months of MLR’s newest team, Anthem RC, being the only team not announcing players for their 2025 season, the MLR, USA Rugby and World Rugby partnership team finally unveiled their full 37 man roster on January 21st. This is two whole weeks into pre-season camp. The team has been publishing numerous images from training sessions, but as they had made no effort to market any of their players, fans had little to no clue who was in said pictures. As mentioned, Anthem RC is a partnership between MLR, USA Rugby, and World Rugby to usher in the next era of USA Eagles ahead of their home (mens) Rugby World Cup in 2031, and as such their primary goal may not be to make a profit as it might be for other teams around the league (NARDB is aware that as of the date this article was published, no team is making a profit), but if these players are on the shortlist to represent the National Team, then market them. A few days before the team announced the roster, they announced that Patrick Stack has been appointed the first team president, with the mission of ‘focusing on revenue generation’ among other things, so hopefully this changes. To not announce a single player before the third week of pre-season camp is ridiculous. Rosters should be finalised and made public prior to January 1st.

To finally get to the Anthem RC roster itself, it was largely as expected. Despite the paragraph above, it’s still the MLR and as we know, MLR has more leaks than a sieve. There are a few notable departures from their 2024 roster, such as top try scorer and MLR veteran Te Rangatira Waitokia, 2023 San Diego Legion draftee Tyren Al-Jiboori, and USA Sevens star David Still, but the team added lots of young talent as well as a number of USA Eagles with significant MLR experience in the likes of Mitch Wilson, Conner Mooneyham, and Sam Golla, as well as five of their six 2024 draftees. They picked up a number of players from the Dallas Jackals when they withdrew from MLR, as well as the Jackals Head Coach Agustin Cavalieri, who is serving as Anthem RC Assistant Coach in 2025. While it’s unlikely that Anthem will challenge for the Shield in 2024, they’re primed to take a big step in the right direction, and the key question is: How long before their first MLR victory?

In Conclusion

Judging from the previous few weeks, it is likely that we can expect a few more announcements out of the Utah Warriors, but as we move into February the moves will get fewer and further between, apart from perhaps the odd last minute trade. These weekly articles will continue as long as there are moves to discuss, but NARDB will be shifting it’s focus to pre-season preparation which will include fact files on each MLR team in the coming days.

As always, you can follow NARDB and James across social media to stay up to date on signings as they happen. @MLRStats on Instagram/Threads, @JamDelay & @NARugbyDB on Twitter/X, and @JamDelay and @NARDB on Bluesky! Also, we’re happy to have Rugby Now back for the 2025 season! Visit shopmlr.com to get your hands on that new Macron gear for 2025, and remember to use code ‘MLRSTATS’ at checkout for 15% off your order!

MLR Player Movement Summary: January 13-19, 2025

NARDatabase

James Deeley

We’re now two weeks into pre-season camps and eagle-eyed Major League Rugby fans are scouring the teams’ social media posts to catch a glimpse of unannounced players prepping for the 2025 MLR season, which kicks off in under 4 weeks! This series of articles will add detail to every player announcement from the previous week, and this particular article will cover the movement between January 13th and January 19th, 2025.

As with the last few weeks, Player Announcements have really slowed down now that the season is fast approaching and players have already reported to their teams. We will start, as usual, with the summary graphic but as you will see, there were only a handful of announcements. Thankfully, the Seattle Seawolves revealed their complete 2025 roster, which this article will also cover and point out some important inclusions or omissions. Let’s dive in with the graphic:

MLR Player Movement Summary: January 13-19, 2025 (1 of 1)

Re-Signings

Having announced the vast majority of their roster way back in November, the San Diego Legion added another returnee when they confirmed the return of capped USA Eagle Tevita Tameilau for his 6th season in California and 7th in MLR in 2025. Tameilau has proved himself a ferocious ball carrier, gaining over 500m for the last four seasons in a row, including a career high of 1,065m gained in 2022. Tameilau passed 3,000m gained in his career in 2024, and is within touching distance of 500 tackles. He scored his 10th MLR try in 2024 and brought his total appearances up to 70 (53 starts).

The rest of last week’s re-signings were from the Utah Warriors, also in the Western Conference. The Warriors announced a trio of returnees for their 2025 campaign. The Warriors will have Tuvere Vugakoto back for a 6th season at Zion’s Bank. The Fijian hooker has 8 tries in 50 MLR games for Utah since 2020, starting 29 times and amassing over 850m gained and 283 tackles completed. Also returning to the forward pack is 2024 Utah Warriors Pathway Player of the Year Kalisi Moli. Moli started 4 of his 12 appearances during his debut MLR season in 2024, completing 67 tackles and running for 169m gained. Moving to the back line, Canadian U20 scrumhalf Sam Reimer is back for a 3rd MLR season, and 2nd with the Warriors. Reimer played with the Toronto Arrows in 2022 before spending a year in New Zealand, and joining the Utah Warriors ahead of the 2024 season. He has 7 MLR appearances in his career to date and will be looking for his first start in 2025.

New Faces and Confirmed Rosters

Last week saw just the one new addition for 2025, and it was for the Utah Warriors, who were responsible for 4 of the 5 player announcements from last week. The Warriors announced the signing of New Zealand winger Blake Makiri for the 2025 season. The 22yo Auckland native joins from Counties Manukau in New Zealand’s National Provincial Championship (NPC), where he’s been playing since 2022.

After a busy first few months of the off-season, the Seattle Seawolves had been relatively quiet for the last few months. However, last week they revealed their complete roster for their 2025 campaign, generating some interesting questions.

First off, there was some confusion among fans about what criteria they actually used to determine the flags beside each name. Having the nationality of players is an excellent addition, but there are some strange decisions from the Seawolves. For example, the Union Jack is used beside Huw Taylor’s name. Taylor is British, born in England with strong ties to Wales, but the Union Jack was not used for Dave Busby, who is Northern Irish…which is a part of the United Kingdom. Additionally, neither Northern Ireland or the United Kingdom are rugby nations. Northern Irish players play for Ireland alongside players from the Republic of Ireland, and the rest of the UK compete as England, Scotland, and Wales. It is possible that this was the preferrence of each player, but it is an odd choice for rugby. This graphic also mislead a lot of fans who claimed that the Seawolves squad only had a small amount of domestic players (from the US or Canada), but that is not the case. Riekert Hattingh and JP Smith both had just the South African flag beside their names, but are capped USA Eagles, for example. Ina Futi and Pago Haini are from American Samoa, which does have it’s own rugby team but they play sporadically. American Samoans are also US-eligible as the islands are a US territory. Toni Pulu has two flags beside his name, why couldn’t other players? Some fans thought the flag choice might be country of birth, but Canadian Dewald Kotze was born in South Africa, and Toni Pulu was actually born in the US, also making him a domestic player. As mentioned, the flags beside player names is a great addition, but in this case it’s confusing and misleading.

Now, let’s dig into the meat of the roster: The Players. It is excellent to see MLR Great Riekert Hattingh back in the lineup after injury curtailed his 2024 season. He can now resume the try-scoring competition with Chicago’s Dylan Fawsitt, and will likely become just the 2nd player in league history to reach 50 tries scored (currently on 42). The same applies to the likes of Devin Short and Charles Elton, who were also badly hit with injury last season, the return of these three to the Seawolves backline is a fearsome slight. Also on the roster is Calvin Liulamaga, who was selected 11th overall by the Seawolves in the 2024 MLR Collegiate Draft out of Central Washington University. Liulamaga is the only one of Seattle’s four 2024 draftees to be included on their 2025 roster.

Moving to the omissions, mentioned just above weas the fact that three of the Seattle Seawolves’ draftees did not make their MLR roster. It’s possible they are playing in the area and we may see them if injuries happen, however. Some big omissions include 2022 Shield Winner Kara Pryor, who missed most of 2024 with injury, and fellow ex-Ironworker Monate Akuei, who made an impact in the back half of the 2024 season. Neither Pryor or Akuei qualify as domestic players yet. On the subject of international players, the Seawolves have a completely new flyhalf pairing in 2025 with the additions of ex-NOLA Gold 10 Rodney Iona, and South African Eddie Fouché. This means that Mack Mason, who finished with 2 tries and 172pts in 2024 will not be returning, neither will all-time MLR points leader Sam Windsor, who added 3 tries and 42pts to take his total to an enormous 595pts. This will be the first MLR season without the great Sam Windsor. Also not returning for Seattle are the likes of USA Eagles Tavita Lopeti (San Diego Legion) and Conner Mooneyham (Anthem RC), as well as MLR veterans Olive Kilifi and Kellen Gordon, and rugby veteran Tevita Kuridrani to name just a few. A full roster review of the Seattle Seawolves, and all MLR teams, will be posted to social media prior to the 2025 season kicking off in February.

In Conclusion

A quieter week around MLR in terms of player moves, because the vast majority of rosters are set and ready for kick off on February 15th. We finally heard a peep out of Anthem RC in regards to their roster, and are expecting that to be revealed on Tuesday, January 21st. This is the third week of pre-season camp and is far far too late for a roster reveal, but it is better than nothing. As for individual players, we may see the odd announcement here and there, but this will probably be only about half a dozen players from now until the season begins.

As always, you can follow NARDB and James across social media to stay up to date on signings as they happen. @MLRStats on Instagram/Threads, @JamDelay & @NARugbyDB on Twitter/X, and @JamDelay and @NARDB on Bluesky! Also, we’re happy to have Rugby Now back for the 2025 season! Visit shopmlr.com to get your hands on that new Macron gear for 2025, and remember to use code ‘MLRSTATS’ at checkout for 15% off your order!