Tag: Seattle Seawolves

Seawolves’ next foe: 4 yellow cards and 1 red

Old Glory DC 22, LA RFC 22: In this tie game, the Los Angeles club, the next one on the Seawolves’ schedule, racked up four yellow cards including a second one against Alex Maughan, which makes that second card turn red. LA opened the scoring but got down 22-10 while playing short-handed. Then in the 66th minute, LA started coming back with two tries and a conversion to tie at 22. Not a team that the Seawolves can let up on for anything short of 80 minutes when they play Sunday, April 14 at 3 p.m. Game will be televised on FS2.

Chicago 38, New Orleans 21; I stopped watching this game at the 45-minute mark when NOLA was ahead 21-12 and well on their way to victory. But Chicago turned to mauls to push over 26 points while keeping New Orleans scoreless. James Scott, a huge lock ran in two tries for Chicago (who needs mauls when the second rows run like backs). Nice to see former Seawolves Ben Landry in his usual white scrum hat out there playing as well as Brad Tucker (wish he’d come back). Larome White, who was a Seawolves in their first year, is also with the Hounds.

New England Free Jacks 25, Miami Sharks 3: Besides an early penalty kick by Felipe Etcheverry, the Miami Sharks did not show up in the scoring column. New England, who lead the Eastern Conference only had three tries, not enough for the extra bonus point. With 15 points for the tries, Jayson Potroz added two penalty kicks and two conversions for 10 points for the 25 total. The Free Jacks stay on top of the Eastern Conference with 19 points, ahead of NOLA with 15.

Utah 44, Anthem 19: Anthem ahead at the half, 19-15, but never scored in the second half while Utah ran in 29 more points.

Dallas player scores 5 tries, but Seattle wins

Good golly, Miss Dallas, you sure like to maul, which helped in Jackals’ hooker Dewald Kotze score five tries against the Seattle Seawolves, who had to wait until the 78th minute for a penalty kick by Mack Mason to win, 34-32.

Kotze scored his tries at the

22nd minute: A maul off a lineout coming from a kick to touch after a Seawolves penalty, and there were many of those. Vaughen Isaacs missed conversion.

34th minute: A maul with the Dallas backs joining in for the pushover try. No Seattle backs joined in the fun. Isaacs conversion bounces off post and over for two.

39th minute: Another maul with the Dallas backs joining in for the push. Seattle backs refused to serve. Isaacs misses conversion

47th minute: Dallas backs once again join in to help Kotze to his fourth try. No conversion.

54th minute: Jackals’ forwards do it alone this time for Kotze’s fifth.

With four (five) tries, Dallas picks up a bonus point and another for a less than seven-point loss.

And while pushover tries are effective, they are also boring to most spectators. Seattle put on a better show.

25th minute: Try by Dan Kriel and a conversion from Mason. Riekert Hattingh picked up the ball from the back of the scrum, out to scrum half Ryan Rees and then on to Kriel to run in for the try.

32nd minute: Seattle shows that they can maul, too, with Pago Haini touching down for the try. Mason converts.

51st minute: Seattle awarded a penalty try after an “unwrapped tackle,” (also known as a chop block, no arms tackle, desperate throwing your body at the legs of a bigger man) on Hattingh. That scored seven automatically and Dallas got a yellow card.

69th minute: Seattle, too, can push over for a try. This one by Dewald Donald. Mason makes the conversion, and the score is 32-31 for Dallas.

78th minute: An offside penalty against Dallas inside the 25-yard line. Mason kicks for the 34-32 Seattle win. Mason added another penalty at the start of the game and made all his conversions.

With the penalty try, Seattle has four tries in the game for the bonus point. That puts them at the top of the Western Conference with 24 points, ahead of Houston’s 23 and San Diego’s 19. Houston and San Diego at off this weekend. So Seattle will be at No. 1 for the next week. Hope they stay there.

Next for Seattle: At Los Angeles on Sunday, April 14, at 3 p.m. PDT. Shown on FS2.

Ouch

3 Seawolves players on Week 5 Top 15

Three Seawolves players named to Major League Rugby’s Top 15 for Week 5. Nice to see Rhyno Herbst in there as a second row, a steady player all year.

J.P. Smith makes the Top 15 again, and Sam Windsor is there as a center — is that a first for him at that position instead of at stand-off or fullback?

Jake Turnbull, a former Seawolves, named as a prop to the Top 15 from the Anthem team.

Bad news for Huw Taylor, Seattle wing forward, who has been suspended for three weeks because of a red card. He will be back for the May 3 game against Anthem.

New Orleans player Jarred Adams has also been suspended for three weeks but will be back in plenty of time for the NOLA-Seattle game on May 11.

Some changes in the Friday night match against Dallas. A chance to see some new faces for Seattle. Hoping this is to rest some of the usual suspects and that this lineup does well against the Dallas Jackals. At Starfire, 7:30 Friday night. See you there.

1 Wenglewski (earlier version from Tribe app showed Orr here)

2 Taufete’e

3 Kilifi

4 Herbst

5 Ngakuru

6 Haini

7 Elton

8 Hattingh

9 Rees

10 Mason

11 Stighling

12 Kuridrani

13 Kriel

14 Futi

15 Rossouw

Finishers:

Perry

Donald

Matenga

Krumrei

Davis

Smith

Windsor

Moneyham

Seawolves down 26-0 when the lights came on

Simply put, Chicago scored 26 unanswered points in the first half hour of the game against the Seattle Seawolves on Saturday. Then Seattle scored 34 unanswered points to win 34-26.

Seattle scored five tries (Jade Stighling, Mack Mason, J.P. Smith, Sam Windsor and Toni Pulu) for the extra bonus points keeping them within four points of Houston, who lead the Western Conference. Mason added three conversions and a penalty kick, which put the Seawolves ahead 27-26 for the first time in the game at 75 minutes. Pulu’s try with a minute remaining and Mason’s conversion kept Chicago from getting a bonus point for losing within seven points.

A remarkable turnaround from the first half hour compared to the time that followed. At the beginning, the Seawolves missed tackles, let Chicago’s backs get outside their back line, gave up an intercepted pass that was run in for a try and had a forward power over them for Chicago’s fourth try (a bonus point).

Then someone turned on the lights. A great pass out to Stighling who touched down in the corner, Mason converted his own try, a show and go by Smith to drop over the Chicago goal line, Windsor’s try from not at the end of an overload (he had another man outside of him – and man inside if he wanted to offload that way) and great back and forth passing by Riekert Hattingh and Ina Futi, ending in Pulu’s try.

You can’t have unanswered points without solid defense, which the Seawolves had after the first half hour. Best defensive play? Gotta be Jean Droste’s holding up a would be try by Chicago at 70 minutes.

Seawolves are back at Starfire on Friday night, April 5, at 7:30 against the Dallas Jackals, who were respectable against Houston this weekend losing, 30-27.  

Houston depends on kicks to stay undefeated

Kicks make a difference in today’s rugby. Too much foot in the game? Maybe. But for now, those are the rules of the game.

In the Dallas vs. Houston game Friday evening, the Jackals made five tries but their kickers only made one conversion, losing out on eight possible points.

Houston had four tries but converted two of them. They added two penalty kicks even though they committed 12 penalties to the Jackals’ eight.

So Dallas had 25 points on tries and two on a conversion for 27 at the end of the game.

Houston had 20 points on tries, six on penalty kicks and four on conversions to win 30-27 and maintain their undefeated status.

Hoping the Seawolves’ kickers are on target this afternoon in Chicago, the team scores more than four tries, the Hounds score fewer and the Miami Sharks pull off an upset against San Diego on Sunday.

Seawolves dance next at Chicago, Dallas, LA

Could be a new version of the “tush push.” Loved this halftime entertainment.
A Seattle welcome to returning AJ.

The Seawolves will be shakin’ their booties against Chicago (there), Dallas (here) and LA (there) before they meet the New England Free Jacks, perhaps a precursor to the championship match, now set for August, not July as previously posted earlier here.
So how did those teams do this past weekend:

Chicago took on New England, the reigning Major League Rugby champions, and got within five points of a win with a last minute try. But New England, behind two tries and a penalty kick from fly half Jayson Potroz, ended with a 22-17 win. Seven of Chicago’s 17 points came from a penalty try after New England’s fullback Reece MacDonald knocked on a Chicago pass at goal line. That resulted in a yellow card on MacDonald. IMHO, a yellow card is too heavy a penalty for an “intentional knockoff.” A penalty at best. A scrum even better. In this case, the penalty try was justified as Chicago would have scored except for MacDonald’s knocking down the pass. Despite the boost from the penalty try, the Hounds are not to be overlooked by the Seawolves.

Dallas also needed a penalty try to come “anywhere” close to New Orleans Gold, 35-22. The Gold scored early after receiving a red card and kept scoring to 27-3 before a legit try by Dallas and the penalty try right before half. Score at the break, 32-15. Dallas added a converted try and in the 79th minute, NOLA kicked a penalty. A red card and a yellow card against New Orleans, and a yellow card against Dallas. The Jackals are 2-2 on the season, which gets them to fourth place in the Western Conference.

What happened to Utah? The Warriors are tied at the bottom of the Western Conference with LA at eight points. And LA beat them this weekend, 36-32. Without the two bonus points for four tries scored and coming within seven pints of the winner, Utah would be at the bottom of the conference alone. LA scored five tries, converted four of them and added a penalty kick. Dan Hollinshead, LA’s kicker, is a danger. (He plays ahead of Jordan Chait, a former Seawolves.) Seattle will need to reduce their penalty count before facing Hollinshead. And the demise of Utah comes from the loss of Olive Kilifi, back in the arms of the Seawolves.

Elsewhere:

Miami 50, Anthem 21: Stakes for this game was a first Major League Rugby win for either team. A chance maybe for an Anthem victory, but it did not happen. Miami scored three tries in the first 13 minutes of the game, and three more in the first 17 minutes of the second half. Miami gets their first Major League Rugby win in a game that got plenty sloppy in the second half.

San Diego 27, Old Glory DC 11: San Diego’s win included five tries, allowing them to pick up four bonus points for the win and one for four tries scored, putting them in second place in the Western Conference, one point ahead of the Seawolves. Old Glory did not look like the team that beat New England Free Jacks by one point earlier in the season. They went scoreless in the second half.

Seawolves are in Chicago on Saturday, March 30 at 3 p.m. PDT. Shown on Marquee Plus (home of the Chicago Cubs), Root Sports and The Rugby Network.

Seawolves fall to 3rd place in Western Conference

After three games without scoring four tries and the extra bonus points in the standings, the Seattle Seawolves racked up four tries Friday night.

So did thier opponents, the Houston Sabercats.

Besides the four tries (20), the Seawolves added two more tries (10), two penalty kicks (6) and two conversions (4) for 40 points on the scoreboard.

The Sabercats (is that a cartoon character?) added a penalty try (7), three penalty kicks (9) and three conversions (6) for 42 points. All those kicks came from our old friend AJ Alatimu, who departed for Houston after two years in Seattle.

Seawolves come away with two bonus points for four tries and for being within seven points of the winner. Houston gets four points for the win and a bonus point for four tries. That puts them on top of the Western Conference with 18 points.

San Diego’s 27-11 victory Saturday over Old Glory DC gives them five points (four for the win, one for four tries scored) and a second place in the standings with 15 points.

Seattle is third with 14 points.

Look for the top two teams in the Western Conference to pick up more four-try bonus points this next weekend with Houston at Dallas on Friday night, March 29 at 5:30 PDT, and San Diego at Miami on Sunday, March 31 at 3 PDT.

Seattle plays Chicago there on Saturday at 3 PDT. A win and four tries in the Seawolves’ Easter basket? That would be nice.

It wasn’t easy for the Seawolves Saturday

Mack Mason

After the Seawolves beat the Miami Sharks, 29-18, a Seattle fan passing in front of me on the way out of the Starfire Stadium, remarked, “That wasn’t as easy as I expected.”

True that.

If the Miami kickers had made all their kicks, the Sharks would have pulled within three points of Seattle. Think if Mack Mason were playing for them.

Fortunately, Mason plays for the Seawolves, who depended on him for 17 of Seattle’s 29 points.

Mason’s four penalty kicks and a dashing, under-the-posts try by Jade Stighling accounted for Seattle’s 19-3 halftime lead.

Miami had an unusual try two minutes into the second half. A cross kick by Miami’s Uruguayan fly half Felipe Etcheverry bounced in the try zone. The Argentine wing forward Benjamin Bonasso tipped the ball higher but then grabbed it and touched down for a try just inside the dead ball line. A missed conversion. Score is 19-8, still Seawolves.

A successful penalty kick by Miami. 19-11, still Seawolves.

Mason kicked another penalty with 60 minutes gone in the game.

It’s nice to have Olive Kilifi back home again,

Then it was time for the replacements to show their stuff. Daquan Perry, from Philadelphia, USA, threw the ball in for a Seattle lineout, raced around the back of the formation and drove toward the Miami goal. Then Olive Kilifi, Seattle’s own replacement prop, secured the ball in a ruck. One more ruck and the ball comes out to Mason for a skip pass to sub Sam Windsor, an Australian who has been in the MLR since the beginning, who dodges, gets his shirt tail caught from behind but not before a pass to Jeremiah Sio, a Rainier Beach grad, who touches down in the corner for a try.

The game ended on a bad note with a yellow card against Seattle and one more late try for Miami, ending the game 29-18.

Still no four-try games, which Seattle will need those bonus points to keep up with the Houston Sabercats. More tries, fewer penalties will make me and that passing fan happier.

The Seawolves are off to Utah next Saturday for a 6 p.m. game that will be shown on Fox 13 and The Rugby Network.

J.P. Smith admitted this wasn’t his best look. Will he ever play fullback again?

Other games:

Houston 27, Los Angeles 12. I thought this game would have been closer. The score was Houston 14, LA 12 at half. But then the Sabercats got control of the game in the last half. It would have been closer if two of LA’s tries had not been disallowed because the scorers started from an offside position. And is LA playing their games in a high school football field? Looks that way.

Update: Grant and Jordan pointed out that there were four disallowed tries in the Houston-LA game, two for each team. I knew about one of the whistled try for Houston but missed the other one. So in the end, that probably means Houston is 15 points better than LA.

And yes, I know that LA plays at Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, CA., but the field still looks small to me. But Grant points out, “That field was recently re-built specifically for the LA Galaxy II USL team Some of the money from the rebuild came from WR so the goalpost sleeves could be built into the field for the USA to host WR XVs Series matches (an annual women’s test series). RFCLA benefits from a low cost, ~2,000 seat stadium that has lighting, access control, plenty of parking, and other typical, professionally managed stadium features.”

San Diego 30, Dallas 23. Dallas was ahead 13-11 at the half but 14 minutes later, San Diego was up 25-13. Then a San Diego Legion received a yellow card for a dangerous tackle. A chance for Dallas to come back. Could they? No. Dallas scored a try with 84 minutes gone  for get a bonus point for pulling within seven points of the winner, which was San Diego, 30-23.

Utah 29, Chicago 15. Chicago Hounds scored first with a try, added a penalty kick and one more try. But the Utah backsare a dangerous bunch, too hard for the Hounds to collar. Keep that in mind, Seawolves, next week.

New Orleans 34, Anthem 19. About what I expected, but best luck to former Seawolves Jake Turnbull and Shane Barry, who scored a try on Saturday, in making this team competitive.

NE Free Jacks: I was wrong, wrong, wrong

I was wrong, wrong, wrong on the New England Free Jacks. No one in the Eastern Conference of the Major League Rugby could beat them, I predicted. They would surely be in the July championships against the Seattle Seawolves. And if beaten in regular season play it would come from Western Conference teams, and maybe, just maybe, from the New Orleans Gold in the East.

Then on Saturday, the Old Glory from Washington, D.C., beat them, 35 to 34.

The first half hour went as I expected: Free Jacks dominant and ahead 17-0 with a try from Fijian winger Paula Balekana, a penalty kick from New Zealander Jayson Potroz and then a heads-up retrieval by another New Zealander, fullback Reece MacDonald, off a high kick from Potroz.

After that, it became obvious that the Free Jacks did not know how to stop a maul, or how to stop Martin Vaca, a 22-year-old Argentine hooker, who scored three tries in various fashions: filling a spot in the back line, from a maul and then off a ruck at goal line.

Four minutes into the second half, New England had regained a 10-point lead (watch the highlights of the game on The Rugby Network at that point to see some excellent back plan and amazing offloads).

Jason Robertson, another New Zealander playing scrum half for Old Glory, reaches backhanded into the try zone to bring the score to 29-21.

More great back play at 53 minutes brings the Free Jacks to a 15-point lead.

But at 61 minutes, Vaca gets his try off the back of the rugby right next to the post. The conversion is good, and Old Glory is within a converted try to win the game, 34-28.

That try doesn’t come until 83:13 on the clock, another pushover maul (this time with Vaca out of the game – he could have had four tries!). At 84:222 on the clock, Robertson kicks the conversion, and Old Glory wins, 35-34, and my previous predictions look like yesterday’s whine.

Back to this blog’s beginnings: Rugby

This blog started because of rugby, and I think it is time for it to return to the great game. Maybe we can earn press credentials for the 2027 Rugby World Cup in Australia.

But for now, let’s stick with the Major League Rugby here in the USA.

Let’s start with a prediction: In the league finals in July, it will be the Seattle Seawolves against the New England Free Jacks, who won it all in 2023.

The Free Jacks might have some competition in the Eastern Conference from the New Orleans Gold, but other than that they’ll beat everybody east of the Mississippi: Chicago Hounds, Miami Sharks, who seem to think adding cheerleaders might make them winners, Old Glory DC and the Anthem Rugby Club, “a comprehensive partnership between the league, World Rugby and USA Rugby.” Not sure who thought that would turn into a competitive side.

Despite being dressed as little tin Revolutionary War soldiers, the Free Jacks play big, winning 46-13 against Anthem, not sure why anyone thought that would be a competitive side.

The Hounds win over the Sharks, 23-19, looked amateurish especially if we note the out-of-place cheerleaders.

NOLA Gold 18-6 victory over Old Glory DC showed some hope that the Gold could give the Free Jacks a tussle.

In the Western Conference, I’m all for the Seattle Seawolves. Sorry if you came to this blog for objective sports reporting. I’ve been a season ticket holder since the beginning. I wrote some stories on the Seawolves for The Seattle Times, but I have since retired (best career move ever, as Carberry, sitting across the Starfire aisle, says). There’s no cheering in the press box, but I’m not there anymore. So . . . Go, Seawolves!

About the 25-19 victory over the San Diego Legion on Saturday: Thank God for Mack Mason and Tavite Lopeti.

Mason, 28, comes to Seattle from the Austin Gilgronis, a team kicked out of the league for having a stupid name. He’s from Queensland, Australia, started playing professionally for Queensland Country in the National Rugby Championship, an Australian rugby union competition. He also played for teams in Sydney and New South Wales. If you look on the Seawolves roster you will learn that Mason plays fly half, is 5 foot 10 and weighs 185 pounds. Nothing said about his kicking. As there should be.

Saturday night he accounted for 20 of Seattle’s 25 points, kicking a conversion and six straight penalty kicks, collecting 18 points from the Bad Boy tactics of the Legion players, who also received a yellow card and a red card. Despite the Legion being down to 14 players after the yellow card, the Seawolves could not find their way to the try zone. That has to improve. Same with the red card.

I, along with many in the crowd, thought the ref could not count the Legion players, letting them play with 15 players after the red card. However, some research shows that “a red card will no longer mean a team is down to 14 players for the rest of the match. The new law will see a red-carded player reduce a team to 14 men for 20 minutes. After that time has passed, the team will be able to replace the player with someone from their bench. The red-carded player cannot return to the field and will face disciplinary action.”

So sorry, ref, for calling you a blind, mathematically deficient idiot.

But a good call on Lopeti’s try in the last two minutes of the game, which took the Seawolves from being down 19-18 to winning 25-19. The try resulted from what looked like a knock-on to me, but as Wallis (sitting next to me at Starfire) says, the ref is much closer and probably has a better view than someone sitting in the top row of the stadium. Go to The Rugby Network and view the highlights of the game (you can slow it down to 25% to see what really happened). You will see, as the ref saw, that the Legion second row knocks the ball out of the hands of a Seawolves’ back toward the SD side of the field. Lopeti charges forward, from an onside position, catching up with the ball and nothing but grass ahead of him to the goal line. Seawolves win.

Probably no pity for the San Diego Legion in the Starfire Stadium, but they are a hard luck team. Go back to the 2019 championship when they lost the shield to the Seawolves’ maul on the last play of the game. Or last year in the championship game when they lost by one point to the Free Jacks. And then a loss Saturday on Lopeti’s dash to the win. Let’s hope the Legion’s luck never changes.

Getting to the championship game in July will be tougher for the Seawolves than for the East Conference winners. The Dallas Jackals were not the joke I expected, using on a last-minute drop goal to win 32-29 over the RFC Los Angeles, who spent part of the second half with two yellow cards, reducing the on-field squad to 13 players. Is that a reflection of the way LA plays the game? Could be.

Houston SaberCats scored four tries and a win over Utah Warriors, 22-15, collecting five points in the standings to lead the Western Conference.

I don’t see any “easy” games for the Seawolves against the other five teams in the Western Conference, but coming up Saturday, March 9, at 7 p.m. look for the Miami Sharks to swim ashore. Cheerleaders, too?