RugbyRebels

Puja wrote:

Mellsblue wrote:

Puja wrote:
Well that one's out of the blue. DC's had some mild rumours but no more than Sacramento, Philadelphia, or LA and certainly a hell of a lot less than Boston, Kansas, or Chicago.

Good place for a side though - especially if they're looking to poach contact sport fans from the people annoyed that the Redskins still keep doubling down on the racism.

No further news on Ontario or Vancouver either, despite the Arrows having a full exhibition season. Apparently the money men in Ontario are still of two minds as to whether they want to go all in - the backroom are being paid for the exhibition, but the players are all still amateur. Hopefully they will decide to go for next season; I don't want to see any further ground lost to the Wolfpack.

Puja

Are Boston not already confirmed?

They are not. It is understood that there will be 10 US-based MLR sides in 2019, which will be the existing 7 (Seattle, San Diego, Glendale, Utah, Austin, Houston, New Orleans), New York, and two TBA. Dallas is generally assumed to be the 9th and has been name dropped unofficially a lot, but is yet to be formally announced.

It was thought that Chicago, Kansas City, and Boston were the main choices for the 10th, as the first two were originally named as teams when MLR was first mooted and Boston have been playing exhibition games against New York and Ontario. However, it appears the stumbling block is money - MLR is a single-ownership league and teams have to buy a fairly pricey stake to be allowed in. It has the advantage of making it very financially secure - all the wages for the players have to be paid into the central league pot upfront, and then the players are paid out of that, rather than running the risk of anyone not getting paid - but it does mean that franchises are going where they can raise the funding, rather than necessarily where the best teams might set up. Chicago would be perfect given there's a purpose-built 5k rugby stadium and the recently event games at Soldier Field providing free advertising (and a triple header coming this June of USA Women v Black Ferns, Ireland vs Italy and USA vs Maori), but there's no news about them getting their act together. I am also told that Boston are a long way off having the funding to buy into the league.

Interestingly, the Guardian article about the DC team says that, "A planned Los Angeles team is closer to realisation than projects in Boston and Vancouver, sources said." Los Angeles is another one that's been mildly mentioned in the rumour mill, but was assumed to be a long way off.

Puja

Ah, ok. After the two RUNY matches vs Boston there was a lot of talk of see you next year etc etc. Must’ve got the wrong end of the stick.

Mellsblue wrote:

Puja wrote:

Mellsblue wrote: Are Boston not already confirmed?

They are not. It is understood that there will be 10 US-based MLR sides in 2019, which will be the existing 7 (Seattle, San Diego, Glendale, Utah, Austin, Houston, New Orleans), New York, and two TBA. Dallas is generally assumed to be the 9th and has been name dropped unofficially a lot, but is yet to be formally announced.

It was thought that Chicago, Kansas City, and Boston were the main choices for the 10th, as the first two were originally named as teams when MLR was first mooted and Boston have been playing exhibition games against New York and Ontario. However, it appears the stumbling block is money - MLR is a single-ownership league and teams have to buy a fairly pricey stake to be allowed in. It has the advantage of making it very financially secure - all the wages for the players have to be paid into the central league pot upfront, and then the players are paid out of that, rather than running the risk of anyone not getting paid - but it does mean that franchises are going where they can raise the funding, rather than necessarily where the best teams might set up. Chicago would be perfect given there's a purpose-built 5k rugby stadium and the recently event games at Soldier Field providing free advertising (and a triple header coming this June of USA Women v Black Ferns, Ireland vs Italy and USA vs Maori), but there's no news about them getting their act together. I am also told that Boston are a long way off having the funding to buy into the league.

Interestingly, the Guardian article about the DC team says that, "A planned Los Angeles team is closer to realisation than projects in Boston and Vancouver, sources said." Los Angeles is another one that's been mildly mentioned in the rumour mill, but was assumed to be a long way off.

Puja

Ah, ok. After the two RUNY matches vs Boston there was a lot of talk of see you next year etc etc. Must’ve got the wrong end of the stick.

They're talking a good game and I think a lot of people were assuming they would be in, but rumour mill says that the funding isn't big enough yet.

Puja

Wow, there already in the process of expansion: Washington, D.C. To Gain MLR Team

http://www.thisisamericanrugby.com/2018 ... l?spref=fb

There were just two matches in Major League Rugby over the weekend but they do impact our rating.

1. Glendale Raptors (Last Ranking: 1): The Raptors had the weekend off and that doesn't impact their ranking. No one has been able to show that they can beat Glendale this year and we don't think it's likely they lose either. They are experienced and while other teams are learning to be professional they are already there. Up next: Bye

2. Seattle Seawolves (LR: 2): The Seawolves have firmly established themselves as the number two team in the league with their only loss coming to Glendale. It doesn't look like it's going to let up for the Seawolves either. Realistically they only need about two more wins to guarantee a playoff spot. The only downside is that they close out their home schedule this weekend. Up next: NOLA Gold

Take the jump to read more.
3. San Diego Legion (LR: 3): The Legion were one of the teams with the weekend off. They have down okay so far this year but their real worry should come in June when they miss a bunch of Eagles. Up next: at Austin

4. NOLA Gold (LR: 5): The Gold continue to show signs of promise but haven't put it all together yet. Their latest win came against the SaberCats, a team they lost to in pre-season but swept during the regular season. With more and more time together they should be better. Up next: Utah Warriors

5. Utah Warriors (LR: 4): The Warriors came out of Seattle with a loss but they acquitted themselves well in that loss. We've said all along it is going to take Utah awhile to figure things out. They have bits and pieces here and there but not the total package. Up next: at Houston

6. Austin Elite (LR: 7): Austin were one of the teams with a week off. Halfway through their season they face some very real questions. Depth is an issue and it's unclear where the wins are going to come from. Up next: San Diego

7. Houston SaberCats (LR: 6): Based on expectations heading into the season, although there were a lot of unknowns, arguably no team has underperformed more than the SaberCats. We probably should have seen the warning signs but as things stand Houston's season would end short of the playoffs, a disappointing result. Up next: Utah

http://www.thisisamericanrugby.com/2018 ... l?spref=fb

A few of these games look like they drew good crowds. But a few of them look like they were played on a road-side park with just a few people standing around the edge of the pitch. Not sure how this is any improvement on pro-rugby, tbh:

Midway through the season and the league's proving the naysayers wrong. On the pitch, there's been a pretty solid standard of rugby, albeit with slightly porous defending. Not much of the big hits to entice the US masses, but the flip side is plenty of tries. A few highlights here:

Off the pitch, 5 of the 7 teams are expected to turn a profit this year, which is massively impressive. Even given the low salary cap, there's still a hell of a lot of cost in transport, facilities, and personnel with a start-up season and none of the investors were expecting to see even breaking even. Seattle have sold out their 4,500 stadium for every game, San Diego have an average of 3k and Utah, Glendale and Houston are getting 2k (the latter even more impressive when you consider they're in a high school stadium while their permanent home is being built and there is no alcohol allowed on the grounds!) I'm given to understand that merchandise is flying off the shelves, as can be seen by Seattle having to take preorders for replica kit for next year, as it's made overseas and they ordered too small a run to meet demand. Still sold $25k of merch last week though.

On the flip side, Austin and NOLA are still playing in front of crowds of 1k or less and looking quite sad. Hopefully both of them will start getting things moving, or they'll be left behind.

Puja

Washington are equivocating about whether to enter MLR in 2020 or to speed up and take the last slot in 2019 and are selling deposits on season tickets to gauge interest (which is impressively ambitious given thar they don't even know what stadium they're going to play at yet).

I'd imagine they were hopeful of piggy-backing on the Wales vs South Africa match, but I don't know too many of that crowd would've left with a positive impression of the sport. Expensive tickets, little local engagement, a small crowd rattling around in a stadium less than half full due to no US involvement and a really odd choice of sides with limited local support, two shadow sides who were jetlagged and just there to fulfil commercial obligations and pick up their fees, an English ref who is known for pedantry and who was actually playing the new law interpretations on the ruck strictly, with confused players used to ths laissez-faire reffing of the Pro 14. It all made for a dire game that made me happy I was watching on delay and could fastforward through half of it. Frankly, if I were Washington MLR, it might make me want to wait till 2020 with the hope that people had forgotten about that turd.

Puja

That game was shockingly bad. Left a terrible impression.

Glendale - New Orleans live:

HT Glendale lead 19-5

3/4 time water break (it's hot in the south): 33-5.

47-10 it finishes. Glendale win in New Orleans.

Frontrunners keep winning . . .

03:00 Finished
Austin Elite Rugby
19 16 3
Seattle Seawolves
20 8 12

03:00 Finished
Glendale Raptors
37 17 20
Houston SaberCats
24 7 17

New Orleans - San Diego live:

FT: San Diego won 22-39

MRL will be moved forward next year, running from January til April, instead of April to July. So get ready for some snow rugger!

http://kutv.com/features/person-2-perso ... wes-season

Utah 12 New Orleans 8 midway 1st half, live here:

Utah 43 New Orleans 46 it finishes!

Utah - Houston live:

FT Utah 31 Houston 7

Elsewhere San Diego thumped Glendale 23-5 (big upset, I think)

Apparently that brings the regular season to a close. I'm assuming the playoffs will feature the top 2 hosting 3 & 4, but they seem to be wanting to keep the exact details a secret:

Year one of the Major League Rugby regular season is in the books. There were some playoff spots up for grabs over the weekend. San Diego made sure they took third place by giving Glendale their first loss of the season. Utah made sure they made the playoffs with a win over Houston. Austin, NOLA, and Houston finished at the bottom of the standings.

If we match up the final standings with pre-season expectations it's obvious that Glendale and Seattle pretty much fulfilled expectations. It's also obvious that Houston was a big disappointment. GIven their long pre-season schedule and the fanfare surrounding the team they under-performed during the regular season. NOLA was also a slight disappointment. They had a lot of former Ohio Aviators players and it was thought that they might do better. A team that exceeded expectations was Utah. We've always said that with more time together they would do well but we didn't think they'd make the playoffs in year one.

You could come to the conclusion that all of the playoff teams were able to draw from a wide base of players (San Diego = Southern California, Seattle = British Columbia) while the three Red River teams might have diluted their own talent pools.

Take the jump to read more.
With their loss over the weekend Glendale failed to have a perfect record for the regular season. They, along with Seattle and San Diego, finished with winning records. The other four teams all finished with losing records. Glendale, Seattle, and San Diego also had a positive point differential.


# Team MP W L D PD TD BP TP
1 Glendale RaptorsGlendale Raptors * 8 7 1 0 +77 +12 6 34
2 Seattle SeawolvesSeattle Seawolves * 8 6 2 0 +44 +4 5 29
3 San Diego LegionSan Diego Legion * 8 5 3 0 +13 +1 4 24
4 Utah WarriorsUtah Warriors * 8 3 5 0 -8 +7 10 22
5 Austin Elite RugbyAustin Elite Rugby 8 3 5 0 -14 -3 6 18
6 NOLA GoldNOLA Gold 8 3 5 0 -75 -13 5 17
7 Houston SaberCatsHouston SaberCats 8 1 7 0 -40 -8 7 11

& if you're really interested in MLR, this is all about the Washington expansion franchise:

Quite a bit of new coming out about next season. Both Utah and Seattle have announced that the season is going from January 19th and running until May 18th, with 3 weeks of play-offs. Utah have said 8 regular season home games and Seattle 7, which suggests a 15 game season probably coming from two conferences. Such an early start to the season keeps it out of the hair of the June/July internationals, with a couple of weeks' wiggle room when they expand further, and there's rumours that the Americas Rugby Championship will be moved to August from 2020, to sync with the South American rugby calendar, so it does make sense in terms of fitting into the rest of the rugby calendar. Plus the regular NFL season finishes at the start of January, with the Superbowl finishing first week in February, so it's perfectly timed to pick up American football fans looking for a contact sport fix after their season has finished. However, I think scheduling in New York, Denver and Seattle in January will be challenging, let alone if Toronto join - I suspect the southern teams will be playing home games for the first half of the season.

On the teams who will turn out next year, a 15 game season doesn't make a huge amount of sense any which way. 2 conferences of 5 would traditionally be 13 games (8 home and away within the conference, 5 intra-conference games), whereas 2 conferences of 6 would be 16. The latter will only happen if the Canadians join, which is looking more and more likely. The money men behind Ontario Arrows have deemed their trial run a success and have formally opened negotiations with MLR. Whether they are in for 2019 will depend partly on if Vancouver are ready to join them yet and balance the number of teams - lots of noise and rumblings, but nothing concrete. I guess the 15 games could be from one conference of 6 and one of 5, but that's awkward to say the least.

As for the new Yank teams, Washington looks likely to stick to its original estimate of a 2020 entry, so we're still left with the deafening silence from Dallas, the increasing rumours of LA, the "that'd make a lot of sense, but no-one appears to want to put their money where their mouth is" of Kansas City, Minneapolis, Chicago, Boston, Ohio, and Sacramento, and the dark horse of Atlanta to fill the last two spots. Rumour mill has it that announcements will be made towards the end of July.

Puja

Playoffs results:

01:00 Finished
Seattle Seawolves
38 10 28
San Diego Legion
24 10 14

03:30 Finished
Glendale Raptors
34 22 12
Utah Warriors
21 7 14

So presumably Glendale will host Seattle in the final in Colorado...

Playoffs were last night/this morning - Glendale beat Utah 34-21 more comfortably than the scoreline suggests, while Seattle just squeezed out San Diego (mostly through dominating the scrum and wrecking SD ball) 38-24. The latter is a bit of a shame as the final is to be played in San Diego and if the home team had qualified, it would've been a full house. Not sure how many will be there if the Legion aren't. The league decided to go with predetermined venue this season to allow them to plan ad advertise early but I think, with a country as big as the US, at least one team really needs to be playing at home.

All three of the southern teams failed to make the play-offs this year and I think having Houston, Austin and New Orleans so close to each other meant that they cannibalised each others' resources for players, whereas the likes of Seattle could pick from the whole north west. Bit worrying that Dallas are still favourite to join next year and bring even more competition for resources.

Puja

Final in San Diego? That is a shame. But I guess the predetermined venue is an American thing; or at least it is in the NFL and produces the biggest single event on the annual US sporting calendar. Interestingly, San Diego is about an equal distance from each city, approx. 1000 miles south of Seattle and the same distance by road from Denver. That's around 16 hours driving time, so you'd imagine most fans will catch a flight. I'd be surprised if they get more than a few thousand.

Yes, Dallas doesn't seem to be a great option. & if Vancouver comes in, that will decimate Seattle. As far as I know, they've tapped heavily into British Columbia; the traditional stronghold of North American rugby.

LA have announced for 2019:

No confirmation from the league as of yet, but there is promised a full press announcement next week. So that's 9/10 for next season with the distinct possibility that Ontario might be coming in as the 10th instead of a US team, as Vancouver still have two groups arguing with each other with neither of them having the full funds as of yet.

Puja

Press Release

After an exciting inaugural regular season of Major League Rugby showcasing the highest level of American professional rugby, the league announced First and Second All-MLR Teams. The top-30 players were picked by selected MLR media members.

First Team:

Loosehead Prop, Paul Mullen, Houston SaberCats
Hooker, Zach Fenoglio, Glendale Raptors
Tighthead Prop, Tim Metcher, Seattle Seawolves
Left Lock, Ben Mitchell, Austin Elite
Right Lock, Ben Landry, Glendale Raptors
Blindside Flanker, Vili Toluta'u, Seattle Seawolves
Openside Flanker, Hanco Germishuys, Austin Elite
No 8., Cam Dolan, San Diego Legion
Scrum-half, Phil Mack, Seattle Seawolves
Fly-half, Sam Windsor, Houston SaberCats
Blindside Wing, Tonata Lauti, Utah Warriors
Inside Center, Paul Lasike, Utah Warriors
Outside Center, Ryan Matyas, San Diego Legion
Openside Wing, Harley Davidson, Glendale Raptors
Fullback, Mat Turner, Seattle Seawolves

Take the jump to read more.Second Team:

Loosehead Prop, Alex Tucci, Utah Warriors
Hooker, Pat Blair, San Diego Legion
Tighthead Prop, Oli Kilifi, Seattle Seawolves
Left Lock, Matt Jensen, Utah Warriors
Right Lock, Matt Trouville, Houston SaberCats
Blindside Flanker, Peter Dahl, Glendale Raptors
Openside Flanker, Matt Hughston, NOLA Gold
No 8., Sam Figg, Glendale Raptors
Scrum-half, Shaun Davies, Glendale Raptors
Fly-half, Will Magie, Glendale Raptors
Blindside Wing, Josua Vici, Houston SaberCats
Inside Center, Andrew Suniula, Austin Elite
Outside Center, Osea Kolinisau, Houston SaberCats
Openside Wing, Brock Staller, Seattle Seawolves
Fullback, Zinzan Elan-Puttick, Austin Elite

The First and Second All-MLR Teams represent the best players from each positional group who consistently demonstrated top play on the pitch throughout the regular season.


Number of Selections by Team:

Austin Elite - 4
Glendale Raptors - 7
Houston SaberCats - 5
NOLA Gold - 1
San Diego Legion - 3
Seattle Seawolves - 6
Utah Warriors - 4

http://www.thisisamericanrugby.com/2018 ... l?spref=fb

Glendale and NOLA should change their names to Denver and New Orleans if they want to gather a major following. & Austin needs to get a new nick.

Wow